The 'baddest' car ever built?

Originally posted by Lotus23
lanciaman, I might add: while all that is taking place, the searing nitromethane fumes will be turning your lungs into gray porridge!

Originally posted by rdrcr
BAD....



402 cid each, 4 wheel drive, the runs were filled with tire smoke from all four tires, start to finish!

http://www.draglist....-2000/Tommy Ivo


It's all relative.

... most of the "Tuner" cars currently being produced today are pretty "bad" 600+ hp, 600+ lbs torque, sub 4 second runs to 60 mph, sub 5's to 100, 200+ mph top speed and stop on a dime.

Hell it's only money, how fast do you want to go?

Originally posted by jdanton
917-30. 1200hp and practically undefeated...

Originally posted by Lipp
[B]It must be a Honda S800 coupé with the famous high revving 800cc engine (a motorcycle chain driving the back wheels) What do I win???? ;)
]

Originally posted by Terry Walker
The original Goggomobil Coupe was a micro-car with a 360cc rear engine. When Vic Watson finished with his, it had a 5-litre small-block Ford in the back, through a VW box, and rear swing axles no less. What's more, he grafted discs onto the Goggo's original swing-axle front suspension, and raced possibly the only car with swing axles both ends.

It had a very short wheelbase and was reputedly very scarey to drive.

Originally posted by tomkatf
.....I may be wrong but the S800 may have gone to a standard live rear axle by productions end. I actually drove an S600 coupe during my last year of high school on Okinawa...neat little car, lots of fun.

Driving along a tree-lined road at dusk I was experiencing something new. But all of a sudden it had a vivid, living connection with the distant past!

There it was! Something I never expected, the connection that took me back forty years! Memories flooded back, but not of sights or events, but of a sound and a setting, a wonderful moment in time that cannot be erased.

The Honda S600 has a very distinctive exhaust sound. Well, of course it does – wouldn’t any car with four tiny cylinders screaming out past 9000rpm do so?

Through the tiny twin exhausts came a kind of a flattened consistent rasp, totally unique and a joy to those who fancy fine engines. But what of the moment in time?

It was the middle of the night, or at least ten o’clock. Belrose was rural those days, none of the brick and tile fill that was to start to form a few years later. The Forest Way was smooth but followed the ups and downs of the terrain, so in front of Mike Kable’s home there was a minor dip and then, after the following rise, the road dropped away a bit before leveling out.

The setting was perfect for that sound to ring out between the wattle and the scrubby brush that lined each side of the road. The Honda didn’t come in to view, it came into earshot. I’d been looking longingly at these cars for months, though I would never be a buyer.

I simply liked their make-up. The way they combined the growing Japanese functionality of design with known race and performance engine techniques, making a really practical screamer of an engine. And there was the rest of the car, of course. The independent rear end with those strange chain cases taking the drive.

So it was a very busy sound that came to my ears that night. It must have been somewhere over 7,000 rpm as the lights came into sight, and then the wavering of the note through that little dip, over that slight rise and down the drop – lovely!

But though it stood out in my mind every time I thought about these Hondas over many years, it’s become less and less common to make that connection. So when I took Russell Denning’s little buzzbox for a drive it wasn’t a thought at all.

“You can’t write about it unless you drive it!” he’d said to me. And he was right. All those revs, so foreign to anyone used to driving cars with the kind of torque that no 600cc engine will ever have. The only car I’ve ever driven that was anything like it was a Daihatsu Campagno Spyder 800. And that was fun too.

Going up through the gears on the Boorowa Road out of Russell’s hometown of Cowra, I reached top gear and was getting along well. And then it happened. A slight dip in the road, that familiar wavering of the exhaust wail, and I was forty years younger again!

What it is that causes these aural sensations I cannot explain. Only a couple of cars have ever done it to me. But it was exciting to once again be united with that sound that forced its way through the scrub that night all those years ago.

Edited by Lee Nicolle, 30 January 2013 - 11:33.

Carl Shafer's ultimate Camaro.

Edited by Bob Riebe, 03 November 2020 - 01:50.

The original Goggomobil Coupe was a micro-car with a 360cc rear engine. When Vic Watson finished with his, it had a 5-litre small-block Ford in the back, through a VW box, and rear swing axles no less. What's more, he grafted discs onto the Goggo's original swing-axle front suspension, and raced possibly the only car with swing axles both ends.

It had a very short wheelbase and was reputedly very scarey to drive.

My dream car......swing-axles BOTH ENDS. All it needs is drums all 'round.

BMW 320i Group 5 ex Peterson (thats a real car) has been rebuilt in Australia:

http://www.speedcafe...e-peterson-bmw/

Edited by cavvy, 31 December 2015 - 03:05.

I would have loved a go in Doc Merfield`s Fraud Cortina! My kind of car.  Remember it?

BMW 320i Group 5 ex Peterson (thats a real car) has been rebuilt in Australia:

 

http://www.speedcafe...e-peterson-bmw/

Remember the one that Gricey raced? Reasonably fast in its day but it really never was that good.

Who has a pic of the Corvair!

A slightly poor mans version of a potential Aussie Supercar. 

For the knowlegable the Reeves sticker is a giveaway. 240HP and 1050kg. 308 LJ, several were built as new cars and conversions in about 72.

I am sure that as a V8 XU1 that Harry would have found 50hp [at least] and the opposition of the day would be playing catch up.

I think the MAB has to be in the running...V12 aero engine, and running on skinny beaded-edge tyres.

Edited by GMACKIE, 02 January 2016 - 00:42.

Not strictly 'cars' but for extreme badness in a competitive motorsport context, one could explore the upper echelons of Tractor Pulling...

Such as:

And a little crazier still:

Edited by 2F-001, 01 January 2016 - 10:05.

Steady 2F, you ill be getting complaints about these not being proper cars or not F1 cars.

They are staggering pieces of very basic engineering, up there with some of the truck race trucks.

And thankfully in Europe there is s superb variety in tractors in the unlimited classes, in the US its V8's or go home it seems, very boring to watch!

Steady 2F, you ill be getting complaints about these not being proper cars or not F1 cars.

 

They are staggering pieces of very basic engineering, up there with some of the truck race trucks.

And thankfully in Europe there is s superb variety in tractors in the unlimited classes, in the US its V8's or go home it seems, very boring to watch!

They must be proper vehicles, they can tow a trailer. Lets see an F1 do that!

Lets see an F1 do that!