Jayant and his team at Engineering Exponent are fairly new contenders among the Indian tuner industry, but they’re already making quite an impact. They’ve built one of the fastest Maruti Esteems in the country with an output near 400 horsepower, but their pièce de résistance is a turbocharged Gypsy. With a 0-100kmph time in under six seconds and an output of 170 horses at the wheels, this is no slouch.
Jayant picked up the car from an army auction long ago, but his friend Thomas bought it from him soon after. Jayant didn't let go of the Gypsy entirely though. He took the Gypsy under his wing and got to work on making one of the tastiest Gypsies we’ve laid our eyes upon. The purpose for the build was to make a car that was good for rallies and also able to run on the roads with no issues. Now, a rally car needs to be a very fast no compromise machine that can take a battering, while a road car needs to be reliable and this leads to a very tough compromise. The revs have been limited to 8000rpm, to ensure reliability and longevity of the engine. A Garrett turbocharger and a custom exhaust system was added to make the car faster and a lot of attention went toward the cooling system, an area where most Gypsies are lacking. They wanted to make sure the car can handle the heat of a rally stage and be perfectly happy in stop-start traffic. In fact, they’ve had issues with the car running too cold at times, even through rally stages! The suspension is set up for fast, soft rally stages with relatively short travel but fast response time from the dampers means it absorbs bumps extremely well. 6th Mile Customs, which is owned by Thomas, also worked on the electrical side of things and took care of painting, exterior bits and safety equipment including the roll cage, harness and other requirements.
The current set up for the Gypsy is a fairly safe one. Jayant says they’ve extracted more power from Gypsies with inferior components to their car and he says this particular package can be dialled up to 400 horsepower! However, in the current state the car isn’t too lairy on the road and it is a very competitive rally car as a second place finish in their category at the K1000 rally in 2019 proved.
Modifications: 1316cc G13BB engine, AEM ECU, forged Wiseco pistons, balanced and lightened engine components, custom cylinder head, 60mm Garrett turbocharger with air to air intercooler, Turbosmart electronic boost controller, Iron Man leaf springs, two-way adjustable Rancho RS 9000 dampers, custom radiator and cooling shroud with twin fan system, Evo Corse wheels, MRF Rally tyres, DBA brake pads and rotors.
Output: 172hp at the wheel/220hp at the crank, running 9.2psi of boost.
These are just some of the highlights of a very very extensive mod list, you can find out more about the full list of modifications here. The cost for a build like this ranges from Rs 12-15 lakh, depending on how much work needs to be done on the donor car and what your goal is. A lot of money is also spent on safety equipment like a racing seat, harness and roll cage, to prepare it for competition.
The guys at Engineering Exponent do some pretty interesting builds, from pepping up your daily driver, competition builds to even just sorting out recurring hassles with certain cars to make them more reliable. They also compete in the ITC with a pair of Esteems. We can’t wait to get our hand on one of their machines!