RR "the beast" by John Dodd - 27.000 cc

[Ragemanchoo]

By the way, I could have SWORN I already posted this photo somewhere on the site, but I guess not? Anyway, here is a fairly recent photo of the car, in Spain. Its alive and well, and appears to be in good condition. Note the recent model cars around it.

I think the yellow paintjob may be the main reason people find the car ugly. Just about any other color would be better. British racing green would probably be the most appropriate, but it might be cliché, too. Hmm

http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c1...ve/Merlin4.jpg

[Wouter Melissen]

Thanks for posting the image, but could you in the future post the image using the attachment system? It ensures that the image will remain available to our readers for many years to come and also cuts load times.

[Ragemanchoo]

Here's the image plus one more, uploaded to the post. Hope this works...

(also, for what its worth, I almost never move my Photobucket images around, especially ones I have posted in blog entries or on messageboards like this. And these two images fall in both those categories, heheh)

[Ragemanchoo]

Youtube video!!!

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YouTube - John Dodd's Rolls Royce Spitfire aeroengined beast Top Gear

[Joao Gois]

From memory, guy found/bought a 27,000cc Merlin engine and had an Rolls Royce sitting around, so he decided to mate the two.
IIRC it wasn't all that quick under acceleration, but had a - rather rattly - high top speed. It's been featured in several magazines, I recall reading about it in at least one.

Nope, nothing like that at all. The framework and engine were originally assembled by Peter Jameson but, AFAIK, he never actualy finished a boywork (or if he did it was destroyed on a fire). That's where John Dodd enters. He bought the rolling chassis and, mating the rear end of a Ford Capri bodywork with a scrapyard-purchased Rolls-Royce authentic grille, created the first finished MkI (not Mk 2, that's Jameson's 6-wheeled mid-Merlin engined Roadster), which he fittingly called "The Beast". He used to cruise around the M5 and stuff with the car (not too much because it will easily average 1 litre/km) and there's the famous story that he overtook a Porsche in such a way that in the next day the Porsche owner called Rolls-Royce to know about "their new coupé model". It was then when John Dodd was sued by Rolls-Royce because of the rights on using the grille and the Spirit of Extasy. I remember watching videos of then featuring John arriving to court with the Beast proudly wearing the grille and the Flying Lady as a provocation to Rolls-Royce, causing quite a stirr among policemen, Rolls-Royce lawyers and by-passers.
Nowadays it lives in Spain, where it is kept in barely-legal conditions by John's son, with a quite different bodywork in it. It no longer has the Rolls-Royce grille nor the Capri rear end. It currently is the most powerful road-legal shooting break in the world, boastin like 1500hp from its Rolls-Royce Merlin 27000cc V12.

And as you can see in the Top Gear video, it's not that slow in acceleration...

I'll post the full article when I retrieve my external harddrive.

[Ragemanchoo]

Mark II, the 6-wheeled car, never had a finished body, did it?

Also, do you think RR would try to sue Dodd if he'd built the car today, what with all the RR "replicas" out on the market (many of them built from Lincoln Town Cars)?

The maroon Capri-based car burned up in a fire before the car went to Spain, but the chassis and engine were restored, and a new body put on it. The current look of the car is the above pair of images. Its a hatchback, but you could also call it a "shootingbreak", I think.

[Joao Gois]

Mark II, the 6-wheeled car, never had a finished body, did it?

Also, do you think RR would try to sue Dodd if he'd built the car today, what with all the RR "replicas" out on the market (many of them built from Lincoln Town Cars)?

The maroon Capri-based car burned up in a fire before the car went to Spain, but the chassis and engine were restored, and a new body put on it. The current look of the car is the above pair of images. Its a hatchback, but you could also call it a "shootingbreak", I think.

Well, the MK II actuallu had a finished body. I have at least 2 pics of it completed (I'll post them as soon as I get my hard drive back) and it's probably the most outrageous roadster there is (I love the split cockpit detail).

I knew there was a fire somewhere along the Mk I life but it now makes perfect sense. I'll have to check up on that but I think the original rolling chassis was "bodyless", and both the bodies pictured were done by John Dodd, right?

Nowadays I don't think Rolls-Royce would care that much about "The Beast" nowadays, but then again, it would be more Rolls-Royce than any Phantom they've built in the last 4 years...


*Edit - Wikipedia info:*

"In the 1960s, Paul Jameson put a Merlin engine (some say it actually was a Rover-built Rolls-Royce Meteor, which was a de-tuned Merlin without superchargers and with steel components replacing some aluminium ones) into a chassis he had built himself. He did not get around to building a body, and sold the car to Epsom automatic transmission specialist John Dodd, who fitted a fibreglass body based on the shape of the Ford Capri and named the machine "The Beast". Originally it had a grille from a Rolls-Royce, but after complaints from R-R themselves he had to change it. According to Dodd's account, he once drove past a Porsche driver on the autobahn who then called Rolls Royce asking about their "new model". The Beast was once listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's most powerful road car. The engine came from a Boulton Paul Balliol training aircraft which would give 1,262 hp (941 kW) at 8,500 feet (2,600 m). No supercharger was fitted to the engine in car so it "only" delivered about 850 hp (630 kW). The car used a General Motors TH400 automatic transmission. The Beast is alive and well in Marbella, Spain and is still owned by Dodd. It is still taxed in the UK; a DVLA search shows the engine capacity as 27000cc.

It is said that the drivers and passengers in many high-powered sports cars have witnessed the rear end of this "station wagon" or estate car disappearing in the the distance in front of them. John uses it for fun as it does about 1 km per litre of fuel, and the noise is "marginally legal", but is is registered for the road albeit still with an English plate."

[Ragemanchoo]

Hmm. You know the Blastolene cars? Several of them had used 700-cubic-inch military tank engines. How does that compare to 27,000 cc's? I don't know the math offhand.

www.blastoline.com

[Ferrer]

Hmm. You know the Blastolene cars? Several of them had used 700-cubic-inch military tank engines. How does that compare to 27,000 cc's? I don't know the math offhand.

That's just a mere 11,5 litres...

[Ragemanchoo]

The Beast's engine, at 1647 cubic inches, would be over twice the volume of the 700-ci tank engine. Yikes!

In the world of smaller aircraft, was the Beast's engine about average for the size of aircraft it powered? Was it only installed in war planes? I seem to recall the Spitfire being the plane associated with the Beast. I get the impression it was oversized to make the planes more manueverable, or at least give them a better chance of outrunning other craft.

[Joao Gois]

The Beast's engine, at 1647 cubic inches, would be over twice the volume of the 700-ci tank engine. Yikes!

In the world of smaller aircraft, was the Beast's engine about average for the size of aircraft it powered? Was it only installed in war planes? I seem to recall the Spitfire being the plane associated with the Beast. I get the impression it was oversized to make the planes more manueverable, or at least give them a better chance of outrunning other craft.

The reason why aircraft engines had such high displacement was only because, at high altitude, the air is much thinner, so they increased it dramatically so that the cylinder could be filled with the (thin) air much earier, specially considering they were super(super)charged. I mean, at low altitude, it's easier to get power but at 10.000ft you'll find hard to squeeze power due to thin air, specially considering it's a fighter plane...

And AFAIK, the Merlin V12 was solely used on aircrafts (like the P52 Mustang or the Spitfire or the Boulton Paul Balliol training aircraft, from which The Beast had its engine) but a non-supercharged version (the Meteor) was also used on tanks.

[Wenkel]

No, I don't.
This is a special request for Ribatejo69. I hope you can understand me.
Será possível arranjar uma listagem com todos os dados técnicos desta monstruosidade?
Se, sim desde já o meu muito obrigado.
Is it possible to get a list of all the technical details of the car?
If so, thank you.

[jcp123]

I have an old book (ca. 1990) with this car in it, called Dream Cars. This one always fascinated me. Quite a story behind it too!

[mordecairs]

how many horsepower did this car has?

[Bleeding Heart]

The Merlin Engine produces:

At a 100 octane fuel, 1,315 hp (981 kW) at 3,000 rpm.

At a 100/150 Grade fuel, 2,000 hp (1,481 kW) at 5,250 rpm