The other ‘Beast’ is up for auction: the story of the car with the biggest engine ever and how much it could cost

The 1950s had passed in which Fiat tried to launch a sports car called Turbina, precisely because that was the mode of propulsion it offered. It was super fast but generated too much heat and it was possible to make a production product out of it. Almost a decade later, almost simultaneously, Ford and Chevrolet began experimenting with one truck each equipped with turbines. like engines. The Ford Big Red remained in development longer, around seven years, until new environmental regulations killed the concept. Instead, the Chevrolet Turbo Titan III was taken out of service in less time, just four years.

In the 1970s it was already clear that the idea of bringing jet propulsion to a car was unfeasiblebut that didn’t eliminate other, more conventional engine types from the equation. The internal combustion engine of WWII aircraft was still an option which could be adapted, even if it was through strange shapes due to its dimensions and its enormous fuel consumption.

It all started in 1966, when an English craftsman car manufacturer named Paul Jamessontried to build a car that could receive a 27-litre Rolls-Royce enginethe same one that, with a turbocharger, powered one of the most stylish and efficient airplanes of the 30s and 40s, the Royal Air Force (RAF) Spitfire. The aircraft engine was Merlin, which had 12 water-cooled cylinders and a rated output of 1,000 hp thanks to this supercharger. But there was a non-turbo version, called Meteorwhich reaches approximately 750 hp anyway. The reason was that both drivers had a displacement of 27,000 cm3, or 27 litres. It is only at a comparative level, today, based on theory and the trend of the industry towards the downsizingthermal automobile engines have a displacement of between 1.0 and 1.3 liters, or 5% of that of the Rolls-Royce.

In 1970, Jameson still could not solve the problem of a gearbox that could transmit the power of this engine to the wheels, and in his search he encountered John Dodd, an English engineer specializing in automatic gearboxes, who thought he had the solution. The car didn’t have a body yet, it was just a chassis with suspensions and wheels. Jameson no longer wanted to pursue the project, so he offered to sell the car to Dodd and he agreed to keep it to pursue.

From that moment, by adapting the automatic gearbox he had imagined, Dodd had a fiberglass body. He did it with a company called fiberglass repairsspecialized in special shapes for type cars dragster. They created what appeared to be a stretched version of a Ford Capri, a sports car that had a great boom in those years, although with a 2.0-liter engine. They call it “The beast”.

When finished, Dodd decided that with a Rolls-Royce engine, it could well adopt the brand’s classic grille of luxury cars, and that’s how the front end became that of a Cornice. In 1974, the car had a skin and a shape, and was registered as a 27-litre Rolls-Royce by the LCC (London County Council), something unusual, but according to the ways of registration of homemade cars, mechanics could define the name even if it was not original. Of course, as long as he had no objections from the brand. This was the case with coachbuilders, very common at the time, who reformed the original cars and could patent them to circulate on the streets.

In 1975, during an exhibition in Sweden, the car caught fire, and having a fiber body, it was completely consumed. However, the chassis and mechanics were intactSo Dodd went back to FGR to have them design a new shape to fit the same platform.

Thus was born the second version of “The Beast”, now with a squarer design that didn’t look as much like the Capri anymore. The burgundy color of the first car changed to a beige color, and in the front, the four lights have given way to eight in an odd arrangement of four on each side. Again the Rolls-Royce grille was there, now it was that of a silver shadowin the middle of these eight optics, and distorting what had been a more sober front end and in line with the English luxury cars of the first version.

But if in Rolls-Royce was not happy with the first car, with the second they let it be known. So Dodd had no better idea than to start make fun of themand he did it with phone calls to the mark, pretending to be a baron who had a Porsche and he wanted to buy this car that had passed him on a German autobahn.

So it all ended in court, which Dodd attended daily with “The Beast” and parked outside the door. On the last day, seeing that it was a constant provocation, his lawyer recommended that he not get in the car. “If it’s provocative to go with a 1,000 horsepower car, let’s go with four”said Dodd, and rode off with his wife and two sons, each on horseback. He lost the case he was fined £5,000 which he refused to pay and was sentenced to six months in prison. But he fled to Malaga where he had not tried to extradite him and he stayed there, along with ‘La Bestia’, who also left for Spanish territory.

At Malaga, Dodd replaced the Rolls-Royce grille with a grille bearing his initials, which is the one the car currently has. In December of last year, Dodd died at age 90. Then his heirs felt that “The Beast” could find a new home and put it up for auction.

In the business Car and Classic will make it available for offers on March 9. How much is The Beast worth? It’s not clear, and there’s no comparison either: such is the uniqueness of the engine that no indicative price is offered. With that in mind, this could be one of the most exciting online auto auctions to watch this year. Car & Classic says ‘it’s impossible to value’ but could fetch over £100,000 at auction.

Before all this, in 1973, the Guinness Book of Records cataloged it as the most powerful road car in the world and said it “exceeded 200 mph (321.8 km/h) numerous times on continental roads”. The reality is that on the track Santa’s podin England, was measured and recorded with a mark of 183 mph, or 292.8 km/h.

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