‘The Beast’ up for auction
- Thread starter Wolfmancatsup
- Start date
At the time of the first one, ca 1972, there where some talk in motor mags that he was clocked on the Autobahn at some very high speed. Not illegal, as we know, but (supposedly) the German police contacted Rolls and complained about them using the A-bahn as a test track. Rolls denied the incident.
Many rumors around Dodd's cars, maybe not all them are true
If all you want is the engine, they are out there. Rare and expensive of course, but less than the car is worth. Guy Martin has one, he runs it on a test stand with a propeller as load. I think he said that it burns a gallon of fuel in something like 5 minutes.
Tony Lockhart
Avoiding Stress, at Every Opportunity
Awww. That’s cute.
eta: that’s for one cylinder. For one run up to 330mph in 3.5 seconds, the engine consumes about 18 gallons.
Tony Lockhart
Avoiding Stress, at Every Opportunity
This appeared on my Facebook feed just now:
This is a Rolls-Royce Meteor V12 petrol engine used in British tanks like the Cromwell, Comet and Centurion - the latter of which is often regarded as one of, if not the best tank design ever.
It is a 27 litre (1,650 cu in) beast that could chuck out around 600 hp and 2,000 Nm (1,500 lb-ft) of torque, and even higher in later versions (such as in the Conqueror).
This engine has a special lineage, as it was developed from the famous Merlin engine used in aircraft like the Lancaster, Spitfire and Mustang. Among other changes, it lacked the Merlin's supercharger, propeller reduction gear, and forged pistons. At first, Meteors were sourced from crashed aircraft.
During testing, the engine was placed in a Crusader (which normally had 400 hp), and the resulting tank was so fast it threw its tracks and crashed into a tree.
With the Meteor (shown here in The Tank Museum), Britain had one of the best tank engines of the war.
This is a Rolls-Royce Meteor V12 petrol engine used in British tanks like the Cromwell, Comet and Centurion - the latter of which is often regarded as one of, if not the best tank design ever.
It is a 27 litre (1,650 cu in) beast that could chuck out around 600 hp and 2,000 Nm (1,500 lb-ft) of torque, and even higher in later versions (such as in the Conqueror).
This engine has a special lineage, as it was developed from the famous Merlin engine used in aircraft like the Lancaster, Spitfire and Mustang. Among other changes, it lacked the Merlin's supercharger, propeller reduction gear, and forged pistons. At first, Meteors were sourced from crashed aircraft.
During testing, the engine was placed in a Crusader (which normally had 400 hp), and the resulting tank was so fast it threw its tracks and crashed into a tree.
With the Meteor (shown here in The Tank Museum), Britain had one of the best tank engines of the war.
-alan-
pfm Member
Yeah - starts and runs much, much better in this vid. when it was still in the hands of a rather fresh-looking 86 year old John Dodds. Different exhaust configuration too - which probably helped:
Someone bagged it for £72.500 , shame it was not me
Rather cheap in these days of automobile collecting.
Tony Lockhart
Avoiding Stress, at Every Opportunity
Might need a fortune spending on it. I found a place online yesterday selling the Meteor engines for £14k+ vat.
What does a genuine Merlin fetch? I guess running issues/fuelling with this one could be down to the lack of blower and tolerances, if it is designed to run on any fuel will it not smoke anyway as a by product of that? Does anyone know what an N/A Merlin actually makes power wise, did they ever run them sans blower?
Tony Lockhart
Avoiding Stress, at Every Opportunity
I would think that a Merlin without a supercharger would make similar power to a Meteor, and that’s dependent on many things including fuel octane rating.
It seems so quaint now. 700bhp can be achieved with many modern engines that already fit into normal engine bays, without difficulty, and without the running costs of an 80 year old design.
Oh for sure, 2L 4 banger will do 1k BHP without much hassle these days. This was always about the novelty of having a Merlin in a car though wasn't it? I mean even back then you could supercharge a big V8 and make over 700 easy so it was never about power alone more about making something unique, even if it is vile to look at and pretty much useless.
Tony Lockhart
Avoiding Stress, at Every Opportunity
It’s a disgusting toy for a rich bloke with little to no taste who doesn’t enjoy driving.
At the Goodwood FoS a few years ago there was a guy with a Rover SD1 that had a Meteor in it, sat on a magazine stand in the trade area. He started it every hour, ran it for a few minutes each time. It was difficult to be polite about it. The poor old thing just made lots of terrible noise, sounded nothing like a Spitfire doing a low level pass.
Pointless.
There are better sounding cars out there.
I suspect that's why it has gone for a modest sum of money. If it looked like a Ferrari 246 it would go for millions even if it can't really be used as a car. For me it's all about the novelty and the fact that it rumbles along a track at 100+ mph doing 1500 rpm. You can't do that with a supercharged Toyota Supra.
Tony Lockhart
Avoiding Stress, at Every Opportunity
Maybe, but 1,500rpm is pretty much flat out anyway. (Ok, nearly 3,000rpm, but I doubt you’ll ever hear one at that speed again).
This one! Jonny Smith linked to it after he did the Beast video. At least the SD1 still looks like a car and not something out of Whacky Races.
Tony Lockhart
Avoiding Stress, at Every Opportunity
Yep, a usable silly car. And at least petrol is cheaper than diesel at the mo
