The Renault Clio is unobtanium here in the U.S. unless you count any of the video games the car's made appearances in, that is. But over in Europe, old Clios, usually the older 172 models, are downright affordable these days, even on a shoestring budget. That's why it shouldn't come as a shock to you that people overseas are shoving all kinds of different engines under the hoods of their Clios in an attempt to build the fastest one around. One of the most promising contenders is a guy out of the U.K. who put an engine that's anything but European under the hood.
That's right; the U.K.-based RuskiWeldFab YouTube channel is on a quest to build the fastest Renault Clio 172 in the entire country. To do the deed, he took the standard drivetrain his Clio left the factory with and promptly threw it all in the recycling. In its place is a Honda K24 inline-four cylinder engine with i-VTEC that you would've found under the hoods of everything from the Honda Accord to the Acura TL and even the CR-V SUV and the Odyssey minivan. There's not much to write home about in its stock form.
But life-long petrolheads know well that with the right skill set, people can turn these plucky little economy car engines into fire-spitting, wailing beasts that make engines with twice the cubic displacement look weak, almost feeble. In this case, RuskiWeldFab took the stock K24 engine and fitted it with goodies like a Garrett G30-770 turbocharger with a beefy GFB X50 wastegate to force as much air back into the tiny engine as possible for maximum horsepower potential. All the new hardware is made to work in harmony thanks to a Haltech Elite ECU, and the engine is paired like fine French cheese and wine to a Kotouc Racing Gearboxes MQ350 six-speed sequential transmission for those crisp, clean shifts racing drivers not only require but demand.
With 500 horsepower to play with at the moment, this would be a pretty wicked set of upgrades on their own. But it's not enough to earn the title of the fastest Renault Clio on the British Isles. Some liberal doses of thinking outside the box were needed to unlock that proverbial Xbox achievement. But as the late, great Colin Chapman once famously said, sometimes the best thing you can do to squeeze out extra performance has nothing to do with the engine. You just have to "simplify and add lightness." Thus, every body panel, exterior trim piece, and most of the interior of this custom Clio was stripped out, removed, and replaced with ultra-light carbon Kevlar panels. Suddenly, that achievement of Britain's fastest Renault Clio 172 doesn't seem so far out of reach.
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