Olly

Recently I was reading about John Cooper's exploits in the 60's experimenting with twin Cooper S engined Mini's, and how the project was curtailed due to a TCA faliure on the rear launching the car into a subsequent roll and a seriously injured Cooper.

It set me thinking on how well a car would handle with an engine over each "axle".

From memory, Volkswagen toyed with a twin engined Golf for Group B purposes, but the project was stillborn. However a guy called Kim Mather used to clean up on single venue rallies in the early 80's in a twin engined Scirocco.

These days Dubsport seem to have perfected the method in Golfs, and whilst the performance of the cars is in no doubt (I once saw the blue twin VR6 motor at Santa Pod: it flies), how about the handling?

Any opinions?

LHD Ver1

I rode in a twin engine Hyndai Tiberon. It was fast as anything, but it threw the balance of the car off so it handled like poo. Of course he has two transmissions in the car too. There was a write up in Sport Compact Car about a few years ago because it competed in the street car shootout. It was fast in a straight line but it could handle at all.

Leslie

John Cooper was the first to do that, his worst problem at first was to get both gearboxes to select the same gear every time. I can't tell you what the handling was like but at least it would be a similar weight distribution between front and rear. There were a few minis converted like that in Special Saloon Car racing but the one that impressed me was a V8 installed in the back seat of the mini driving the rear wheels. Looked frightening but it went quite well down the straights at least!

Les