Team Castrol Toyota rally driver Leeroy Poulter swopped his four-wheel drive two-litre S2000 Toyota Auris for a 1.8-litre turbo-charged Toyota Aygo Crazy and won his class in the Renault Knysna Hillclimb on the southern Cape coast last weekend.
The Aygo Crazy is a one-off concept racing version of Toyota’s recently launched new entrant into the A-segment of the new car market. It features a rear-mounted engine developing 150kW and 240Nm of torque (compared to the standard car’s 50kW and 93Nm) which propels the 3.5-metre 1 050 kg mini car from 0 to 100 km/h in under 6 seconds and can achieve a top speed of just over 200 km/h. It also has a full roll cage, racing seats and safety harness.
The 30-year-old former production car and karting champion was making his first appearance at the annual motor sport spectacular and blasted his way up the 1.9-km Simola hill in a time of 50.799 sec at an average speed of 134.647 km/h.
“It was a lot of fun,” said Poulter, one of South Africa’s most versatile racing drivers. “It was very different to flying over yumps and sliding across gravel roads like I was doing in the Hencom Rally in Mpumalanga two weekends ago. Everyone was very impressed with the Aygo’s power, which was really surprising for a car of its size, and none of us expected it to perform as well as it did (25th fastest out of 80 cars that took on the hill).
“It attracted a lot of attention with its special bodywork and carbon fibre rear wing. It’s like a kart with doors and a roof! I really enjoyed beating a much more powerful racing version of the Renault Megane RS Cup.”
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