I saw an old American woody station wagon in Spain in the late 80s that had
a Merlin up front, apart from having had the front wings and bonnet
stretched by 2 feet it looked standard. The owner said wheelspin was a
problem on start-up but the car would cruise at 200mph and get 12 mpg at
that speed!
There is also the story of someone dropping a Merlin into a Rolls Royce in
the UK in the 80s, he then couldn't get anyone to insure it so he bought an
insurance company and insured it himself. He used to take it to Germany to
play and was eventually sued by Rolls Royce who got fed up with calls from
people saying they didn't care how much it cost but they wanted one of the
cars that could leave Ferraris dead. It was featured in one of the UK car
mags after it overtook a line of supercars the magazine was testing flat out
on the autobahn.
I always dreamed of dropping a Merlin into a car until I learned they cost
#40,000 to rebuild 10 years ago and they need a rebuild at about every 1000
hours.
MikeB
1965 B under construction
----- Original Message -----
From: "Max Heim" <mvheim@attbi.com>
To: "MG List" <mgs@autox.team.net>
Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2002 1:00 PM
Subject: Re: Bad Taste Award December Edition
> There is a long tradition (more recently in eclipse) of powering race or
> record cars with aircraft engines. The Napier-Railton is a famous example.
>
> It's a little hard to figure the utility of this particular vehicle. It's
> also a little odd he didn't start with a Ford in carrying out his Mustang
> theme. On the other hand, it's pretty obvious why he didn't start with a
> Spitfire...
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