Twin Engined Part 2

After my last blog about twin engined vehicles, quite a handful of persons made some more suggestions to add to the list. Here it goes.

Pikes Peak edition twin engined Cultus

Long before Nobuhiro "Monster" Tajima rocketed his Escudos and XL7s up Pikes Peak, he started out with a twin engined Suzuki Cultus powered by two heavily modified and turbocharged G16s each pushing out 400hp leading to an 800hp 4WD monster in an 873kg package. After his run was over with this car he went on to running with twin engined Escudos and then on to his usual lot of single engined Escudos and XL7s. Now VW also did a couple twin engined experiments for the same hill climb using Sciroccos and Golfs, but of course VW exited the sport after lacking success, unlike Suzuki who continuously tried up to the point where it's a one horse race now.

Mini Moke Twin

The Mini Moke was to be Britain's answer to the successful Jeep CJ's they had running around in the war. Of course unlike the CJ [which was originally designed to go offroad] the Moke was built using parts from the Mini, which was a city car, which wasn't built to go offroad. Unfortunately no military wanted a Moke [as golf carts were cheaper and safer] so they sold them to the public and they were relatively successful [which is weird] Anyways, while they experimented with the Moke they tried out 4WD which was, in these days, still in the witchcraft stage of development. The biggest problem they faced immediately with putting 4WD on this was the ground clearance, because this was essentially an offroad Mini, ground clearance was limited and putting on 4WD equipment under the car would make things worse. The solution, instead of linking the front wheels and back wheels to one engine and transmission, they gave the back wheels its own engine and transmission. So you're here thinking, "a Mini, with twice the engine, thats ridiculous!" and in fact it was too good to be true. Because the Moke used the 800cc and smtn engines [dunno why] instead of the top of the line 1275cc engines, power really was non existent. And of course because, the heaviest part of any car will always be the engine followed by the transmission, and this had two of each, it was bloated. The idea was scrapped and they figured the little benefit from 4WD is negligible compared to loss incurred by the extra weight. But look at it offroad [this is a FF one though]

Citroen Sahara

The Citroen 2CV, one of the only cars in the world that was as slow as it was cool. Of course I may be the only person who think's they are cool but never mind that. In the original design brief for the 2CV they said "it must be able to carry peasants across the rough countryside" The solution to that, give it suspension as soft as teddy bears. Of course because it was so slow, they could have made it even softer seeing that it wouldn't reach the high speeds associated with body roll. After the success of the 2CV soldiered on, someone thought it was a great idea to give those peasants 4WD so they could rally them. Surely enough the french decided it was time for them to make a 4WD car but unfortunately they didn't know how [especially since the French created Front wheel drive] So they did it the Mini Moke way. Take another asthmatic flat 2 cylinder engine from another 2CV and put it around the back. Now with 2 flat 2 cylinders you might think it would be 2/3 as fast as 911, but it was just as slow as before, only with a new name, "The Sahara" and a big noisy hot box where the trunk used to be.

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