Packard-Merlin powered car

[gruntie]

Simply awesome - and that's just the paint job!

55 Chevy (http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ru=http%3A%2F%2Fsearch.ebay.co.uk%3A80%2F%2Fsearch%2Fsearch. dll%3Ffrom%3DR40%26satitle%3D4582238267%26fvi%3D1&item=4582238267#ebayphotohosting)

Maybe a candidate for "What cockpit"?

[Say again s l o w l y]

WOW! I want one. I wonder if they'd swap it for a knackered Renault?

[diginagain]

Bit cheeky, calling the donk a Packard. It clearly has a Rolls-Royce manufacturers plate on the rocker cover.

They'll be claiming they won the war single-handed next.

[Agaricus bisporus]

I just hope the car was built by someone with an IQ and education standard some orders of magnitude higher than the numptie that wrote the blurb on that e-bay page. I have seldom seen such illiterate nonsense. I know six year olds with better english than that!

[Onan the Clumsy]

I didn't think the English was THAT bad, especially considering it's no longer the primary language of this glorious country.

THIS ABSOLUTLEY GORGEOUS ONE OF A KIND 1955 CHEVY THAT ONCE BELONGED TO AVA GARDNER HAS BEEN TRANFORMED OVER A FIFTEEN YEAR PERIOD TO PAY HOMAGE TO THE P51 MUSTANG wouldn't it pay more homage to install the engine in an actual P51?

[Noah Zark.]

I remember many moons ago that a guy here in the U.K. who had a business ( repairing car automatic gearboxes, as I recall ) built a huge car around the outside of a Merlin, and put a R.R. grille on the front.
R.R. were mightily displeased at this, and through much public legal wrangling eventually made the guy remove the grille from his car.
The publicity, of course, didn't do the guy's business any harm at all, whilst it was felt that it did do R.R. no favours for being all-round mardy ar$es!

[BEagle]

That was John Dodd's 'beast'. I understand it was actually powered by a RR Meteor tank engine - a non-supercharged Merlin? And it never managed anything like 200 mph...

Some info here: http://www.superjohn.f9.co.uk/thebeast.htm

[Conan the Librarian]

But I believe it did get the World speed record for towing caravans, if memory serves right. Think it was 137mph or thereabouts. Remember reading it some 20 odd years ago. Looked like a big and not so subtle (!) Capri, didn't it?


Conan

[Agaricus bisporus]

The only RR bit on Dodds' car was the radiator grille, and Rolls were mightily upset at him calling it a Roller. The bodywork and trim build quality (I looked it over closely) was dreadful, and the engine bay, even to a 14yr old, looked a bloody mess. The engine was a Rover unit from a tank (Merlin based admittedly, but no way a RR), and according to one of the contemporary car mags had been bought as scrap with a cracked block. Tyres I recall were Avon Turbospeeds rated at 130mph max. The hype and the reality were far apart. It eventually caught fire on an Autobahn and burned out.

Saw in the Sunday Times Mag this week that Jay Leno has a car he claims has a Merlin in it. Is this (mustang car) the same one?

[cringe]

Leno's Phantom II with a tank engine:

http://media.popularmechanics.com/images/tb_lenolead-lg-3.jpg

[FJJP]

The one I remember looked like an overgrown Volvo [Simon Templar] sports car. It had a monstrously long bonnet with a RR radiator. It was definitely a RR Merlin aero engine in it [I saw it] and there was certainly no mistaking the sound; he could only run it for a few minutes stationery before it began to overheat.

RR did, indeed, threaten legal action to get him to remove the grill - until someone pointed out to them the publicity value. They promptly became sponsors and supplied much technical help.

It used to be taken for regular burn-ups on the Autobahns, where the Porsche-driving German Police could not catch it. However, the story goes that they created a roadblock to stop it - just to admire it!

It burned out during a charity visit to Norway...

[Agaricus bisporus]

FJJP, I hate to take issue but you've been caught by the Dodds bullshine. The car certainly looked impressive from a distance, but close up the reality was verey different. Dodds made a lot of noise about this car and was proved to be an utter charlatan in the end. It was NOT a Merlin but, as I said, a Rover built engine from a tank. Perhaps the RR rocker covers decieved you? The Tyres were rated at 130mph. The stories about the German Police being unable to catch it were invented, as it is doubtful the car could have exceeded 130mph tyres notwithstanding. Tales of it doing 200mph or roadblocks as the owner claimed, were utter rubbish. RR threatened to take him to court for usurping a trademark if he continued to claim it was a Rolls, and I do not believe that they would have had anything to do with such a shoddy piece of work, it really was an utter heap. Someone somewhere will still have a copy of the (Autocar?) mag article that exposed this sham, it made interesting reading. Somewhere I have some pictures of the car at Epsom racecourse. I will see if I can find them.

[Bre901]

A bit of search can help : last year's thread (http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=138230&highlight=merlin+AND+car) on same topic

[FJJP]

Agaricus

Thanks for setting the record straight. I had no idea he was a BS - I took what was said at face value. Ho hum, it would have been a nice story if it were true...

FJJP

[effortless]

I remember this particular Beast well. He used to do the Brighton speed trials from time to time. I quizzed Dodd on his "Spitfire engine" and said that I thought it to be a tank engine. He was very snotty about it.

For the record he never turned in much of a time. If I recall he was slower than a pre-war Dougless motorbike one year. It made a good noise though

[teeteringhead]

ISTR one of the more sensible car magazines (possibly "Car") doing quite a long article exposing all of Dodd's BS.

They discovered (IIRC) that another journo's claim of 200 mph was based on what the speedo went up to (!) as the car wouldn't start during the journo's visit .... and the speedo was in kph anyway!! :rolleyes:

.. and on that principle, the Teetering Skoda can do 200 mph too! ;)