DervMan’s SuperCinq

The SuperCinq is a fully race prepared Cinquecento Sporting, which I bought to compete with the Ka.

Modifications

Engine: gas ported head, lightened, strengthed and balanced components, reprogramed ECU, straight through exhaust and racing air filter, stage two turbocharger.

Transmission: fully customised racing five speed gearbox, triple plate racing clutch, lightened flywheel. The Cinquecento’s gearing has been significantly raised to allow for a much higher maximum speed, and to avoid excess wheelspin in the lower three gears.

Braking: racing brakes, front/rear distribution controller. Brake bias set slightly forward, to improve braking effort.

Suspension: fully customised suspension set up, including adjustable ride height, shocker bounce and re-bounce, front and rear struts. The car has been fully lowered, the both the shocker bounce and re-bounce rates have been adjusted for the best compromise between a hard ride and optimum traction. The Cinquecento proved much harder to set up compared to the Ka, probably owing to a shorter wheelbase, a narrower track and similar power.

Tyres: soft racing slicks.

Bodywork: racing bodywork changes, including variable front and rear wings. Maximum downforce used!

Other: stability control system (attempts to correct oversteer). Works reasonably well on the Cinquecento.

Acceleration

The Cinquecento’s little 1·1 litre donk is reasonably punchy when wearing the full-on Gran Turismo kit, producing 187 PS @ 6,900 rpm and 213 Nm @ 5,500 rpm. However, like the Ka, if you use the automatic option, you won’t be getting the full performance from the engine. The Cinquecento’s engine benefits from being revved into the red, where it produces the best acceleration - the best engine speed to change up is 7,250 rpm. This can make driving the SuperCinq a bit of a challenge, because if you hang on to the gear too much, you will hit the rev limiter.

Using manual transmission, the SuperCinq crosses the 400 metre line in 14·869 seconds, with a terminal velocity of 94 mph. The 1,000 metre marker comes up in 27·385 seconds, but with a speed of 120 mph.

Flat out, the SuperCinq hits 150 mph.

Braking

The Cinquecento’s brakes are reasonable on a straight line, but even after extensive tweaking, I have been unable to cure the car’s understeer trait under even modest braking around a corner.

Handling

It took a lot of fine tuning to get the Cinquecento’s handling as I like it. As standard, it actually handles reasonably well, despite the roll angles that it’s possible to generate! It’s when you stiffen and lower the Cinq that things start to go a bit wayward. The ride suffers, to the point that you can get a dreadful vibration on a less-than-perfect road. The usual trick of softening the spring settings and ramping up the strut stiffness is not terribly effective, since you get the vibration when accelerating out of corners. With the full stage two turbocharger, there is enough heave to break traction. Instead, the Cinquecento and I endured many hours of fine tuning various suspension settings. At the time of writing, it is not perfect (and can still shudder under braking as the stability control system keeps the tail in line), but under power it is probably as good as it gets.