If you’ve read my work for long enough, you know I love when people do absurd things with vehicles. Engine swaps are already pretty cool, but what’s better? An engine swap that goes against conventions. Go ahead, put that Cummins in your Charger and I want to see your Duramax power an Oldsmobile LSS.
There’s a Rolls-Royce Griffon 74 V12 engine currently for sale on Bring a Trailer. It’s secured to a display stand, but there are better places for a 37-liter aircraft engine. How about we put it into a Spitfire, but not that kind of Spitfire? From Rad Barchetta:
Stuff it back into a Spitfire, of course. A Triumph Spitfire.
This morning, Jason wrote a Cold Start about a turn of the 20th-century car that threw shade at another car. But forget about that, I love this alternate history presented by Brandon Forbes:
It’s amazing to me that the first car to break 60mph was electric. There’s an alternate universe out there where EVs were developed more than ICE cars, just think about how much more advanced we would be had people not given up on EVs 100 years ago.
Don’t worry, IRegertNothing, Esq. has something to laugh about:
If only Calvin pissing on another brand’s logo stickers had existed in 1900…
This morning, Matt wrote a Morning Dump about how Stellantis wants a new CEO. This is bad because we have a whole pile of images of Carlos Tavares, pictured above. Poor Matt Sexton:
All I know is, regardless of what happens to him, “Carlos Tavares, pictured above” is now permanently etched into my brain.
I will also present NC Miata NA’s comment without further comment:
We proudly announce that Stellantis will be the first company to utilize machine learning for our executive leadership. Introducing Lee AI-acocca!
Have a great evening everyone!
“Lee AI-acocca”
I larfed.
While I love Spitfires (the car) they are great candidate for an engine swap. The plane engine might be a bit much. All ate up with motor, as DW would say.
Thanks, Mercedes!
Yeah… we need a deep dive with 3D Scans and CAD renderings to see just how feasible it would be to install a Rolls Royce into a Triumph Spitfire. I have… several.. Triumph Spitfires to 3d Scan and access to a professional scan arm. I wonder if anyone has 3d scanned the Rolls Engine.
I am just going to go out on a limb and say the front suspension and unibody of the car might need to be beefed up. I could see the torque of that engine twisting the spitfire into a pretzel.
Oh, it’s not going to work unless the merlin wears the spitfire body as a hat with everything else custom fabricated.
I just want to overlay the 3d scans to show the massively incongruous scale
Yeah, the engine itself is probably half the size as the car and 1.5x the weight.
Uselessly silly things I know; A griffon engine is three inches shorter than a triumph spitfire. There is going to have to some sort of gearbox so the only sensible solution would be to mount it transversely. I am using the word “sensibly” in the widest possible manner here.
Remove the front end and build a rail.
We simply have to build a double (or so) sized Triumph Spitfire!
3 inches shorter than a Spitfire wheelbase, which is 83″. The whole car is 145″ or so.
Which means it’ll fit between the wheels neatly to make it a mid-engine layout! The cabin might be a little cramped…
Matt’s not the only one. I can easily see me forgetting Tavares’ name in a few years and saying, “You know: old ‘pictured above’”