The Intercooler Aug 4, 2025

Great cars with rubbish engines (and vice versa) #274

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Car

Porsche Boxster

The Porsche Boxster is a small sports car that has the engine located in the middle, which helps it handle well on the road. Some versions have a four-cylinder engine, which is less powerful than the six-cylinder versions.

Car

Alpine A110

The Alpine A110 is a small sports car that is fun to drive and known for being very light and nimble. It's popular among car enthusiasts for its performance and style.

Term

turbocharged

A turbocharged engine has a special device that helps it produce more power by pushing extra air into the engine. This makes the car faster without needing a bigger engine.

Term

four-cylinder

A four-cylinder engine has four small chambers that help create power for the car. It's usually more fuel-efficient than larger engines but can be less powerful.

Term

flat-six

A flat-six engine has six cylinders that are laid out flat instead of standing up. This helps the car handle better because it makes the car's weight lower.

Car

Porsche Cayman

The Porsche Cayman is a version of the Boxster that has a hard top instead of a convertible roof. It was also made from 2012 to 2016.

Term

specific output

Specific output is how much power an engine makes for each liter of its size. If an engine has a high specific output, it means it can produce a lot of power without being very big, which is good for fast cars.

Term

flat-four engine

A flat-four engine is a type of engine where the cylinders are laid out flat, which helps with balance and handling in cars.

Term

turbo engine

A turbo engine has a special part called a turbocharger that helps it produce more power by pushing more air into the engine.

Term

naturally aspirated engines

A naturally aspirated engine gets air into it just by using the pressure from the atmosphere, without any extra help from devices like turbochargers. This can make the engine feel different when you drive it.

Term

low down torque

Low down torque means the engine can give you a lot of power when it's running slowly. This helps the car start moving quickly and makes it easier to drive in regular situations.

Term

gear ratios

Gear ratios are like the settings on a bike that help you pedal easier or harder. Taller gear ratios mean the engine has to work harder to make the wheels turn, which can change how fast the car speeds up.

Term

chassis

The chassis is like the skeleton of a car. It holds everything together and helps the car stay stable while driving.

Term

4-liter

A 4-liter engine means the engine's size is 4 liters. Bigger engines usually have more power, which helps the car go faster.

Term

GTS

GTS is a special version of a car that is designed to be sportier and faster than the regular version. It usually has better performance and features.

Part

S85 V10 engine

The S85 V10 engine is a powerful engine made by BMW that has ten cylinders. It's designed to give the car a lot of speed and performance.

Car

BMW M5

Car

BMW M6

Car

Audi S6

The Audi S6 is a faster and sportier version of the regular Audi A6. It has a strong engine that makes it quick and fun to drive.

Term

RPM

RPM means how many times the engine spins in a minute. A higher number usually means the engine can produce more power and sounds exciting.

Term

horsepower

Horsepower is a way to measure how powerful an engine is. More horsepower usually means the car can go faster and accelerate better.

Term

high-revving engines

High-revving engines can spin really fast, which helps them produce a lot of power. They're often found in sports cars and make driving more exciting.

Car

Ram 1500

Car

BMW E90

Car

BMW M3

The BMW E90 M3 is a fast and sporty version of the regular 3 Series, made to be more powerful and fun to drive.

Term

V8

A V8 engine has eight cylinders arranged in a V shape, which gives it a lot of power and a unique sound. It's popular in many types of cars, especially performance ones.

Term

hot hatchback

A hot hatchback is a small car with a hatchback design that is built for speed and fun driving. They usually have stronger engines and better handling than regular hatchbacks.

Car

Ford Mustang

The Ford Mustang is a popular sports car that has been around for many years. It's known for being fast and stylish, making it a favorite among car enthusiasts.

Car

Mclaren Speedtail

Term

V12

A V12 engine has twelve cylinders that help it run smoothly and produce a lot of power. It's often found in fancy and fast cars.

Car

Aston Martin Vanquish

Term

4.0-litre twin-turbo V8

This is a type of engine that has eight cylinders and is 4.0 liters in size. It uses two turbochargers to make the car go faster and use fuel more efficiently.

Car

Cadillac V16

Car

Lancia Thema

Car

Alfa Romeo 164

Car

Cadillac Sts

Car

Chevrolet Corvette

Car

Alfa Romeo 147 GTA

Car

Alfa Romeo 156 GTA

Car

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Welcome back to the intercooler podcast, powered by car finance specialist JBR Capital.

This is episode 274 with me, Dan Proser, and him, Andrew Frankel.

I think this is a fun topic this week.

Good.

We're talking about the cars that didn't deserve their engines and the engines

that didn't deserve their cars.

Does that make sense?

I think it does.

Well, we'll find out in about 45 minutes.

We will.

Great cars in average engines in average cars and average cars with great engines.

Yes.

That's another way of putting it in.

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So great engines in average cars, average engines in great cars.

Yes.

I've got quite a few here.

Good.

I suspect, yeah, you've got a very long list of both.

I can see your notebook there.

Well, OK.

But mine are probably quite, most of mine are probably a bit older than yours.

Yeah, I think-

There's going to be some overlap, isn't there?

A little bit.

OK.

What's the betting that in the not very good engines in really good cars,

you've got a four cylinder Boxster?

Yes, I have.

You see?

There you go.

We'll get to it.

Yeah, we will.

OK, well, I'm going to get us underway.

OK.

And for anyone playing Alpine A110 Bingo this week,

Oh, OK.

Get your dabbers out.

Oh.

Because Alpine A110, as we all know, it's a fantastic little sports car.

Is it?

Yes.

We mentioned that.

It's brilliant.

And the engine, 1.8 turbocharged four cylinder is fine.

Oh.

It is fine, isn't it?

Yeah.

Maybe quite good even for that sort of engine.

But it's still a turbo four.

It's not a really stirring, high-revving, great sounding

sports car engine.

I think I'm less down on it than you are.

I think it's, OK, I wouldn't say that it's the strong suit.

But in most cars, you tend to find either a good chassis

supporting an amazing engine or the other way around.

And I think it is quite comfortable in its supporting role.

I think my bigger issue with the powertrain of that car

is the lack of a manual gearbox.

Yeah, that's fair enough.

So there's a lovely little 2.7-litre flat-six,

naturally aspirated, that was available in earlier versions

of the Boxster and Cayman, the 981 versions.

2.7-litres, 260-odd horsepower, revvy thing.

I remember it.

Quite high specific output, exactly the kind of engine

that you want in a lightweight car.

Yeah.

I think that, as long as you can package it, obviously,

that, and especially with a manual gearbox in the A110,

would just be sublime.

But the problem with the A110 is, and in fact,

it's true as to virtue, too, is it is so compact.

It is so small, which is one of the reasons

it is so light.

There just wouldn't be space for something like that.

Probably not.

Maybe you'd need a V6 just to make a more compact engine.

But even then, it might not fit.

No.

OK, Andrew, give us one of yours.

OK, so I'm going to nick this,

because I know you've got it too.

But seeing as we've already mentioned it,

I'm going to do the flat four Porsche engine,

the turbo engine.

I mean, it's not a great engine.

It doesn't sound very good.

It doesn't rev like you'd like a Porsche engine to rev.

It's not as smooth as a flat six.

And when you've always been used to having six cylinder engines

in Boxters and Caymans, it is a bit of a rude awakening.

So I don't think it's a very good engine.

All I would say in its defense is

it does have some attributes you

don't get in the naturally aspirated engines.

It's got low down torque.

Yeah.

It provides a means of, you know,

the gear ratios in those cars are really, really tall.

And when you've got that low down torque,

it makes the gear ratios.

It doesn't quite make sense to them,

but they're a lot less kind of annoying

than they are particularly in the lower spec Cayman Boxters,

which really need revs before they will go.

And I think its single greatest asset

is, again, torque related, which

is that it exploits the chassis,

gives the chassis something to do,

because you really can put a lot of energy

into the rear axle really quite easily.

So I don't think it's all bad.

But when you get in it and you start it up

and it just makes that blaring, indistinct noise

when you think that it's replacing a naturally aspirated

flat six, it's just not good enough.

No, it's not.

No.

Do you think Porsche would now admit that?

No, absolutely not.

Well, I mean, not least because, well, I mean,

I don't know where that engine is still on sale.

I mean, it's obviously the Cayman Boxter on sale in Europe.

They still are in the UK, but can you now

only buy a GTS, which has the 4-liter?

I can't remember.

No, not sure.

So Porsche certainly wouldn't admit it yet.

But maybe one day.

Maybe one day.

I mean, it's one of those things that was,

if Porsche had been an independent company at the time,

they'd never have done it.

It was one of those things that Volkswagen said,

you kind of have to do for corporates,

CO2, you know, cafe averages.

So, yeah.

I'm going to do one that's the complete opposite.

So that's a couple of, well, both for some of the turbo

engines in sports cars that weren't exactly what we wanted.

I'm going to do the opposite.

I'm going to do a great engine in a car that didn't deserve it.

Oh, come on.

I bet it's on my list.

This might wind a few people up.

BMW S85, the 5-liter V10 that went

into the M5 and M6, right?

I can back this up.

I've actually got.

And maybe we'll do this together.

I've got an Audi S6 with a 5-point-liter V10 engine in it.

But in it for a completely different set of reasons.

But here we go on.

So the BMW engine, it revs to 8,250 RPM.

Sounds good, 500 horsepower.

But it only ever went into two tonne cars.

And we love high-revving engines.

They're great.

They're really characterful.

They tend to sound great.

They're exciting.

But they don't make much talk, relatively speaking.

And so in a heavy car, they are not at their best,

not even close.

Imagine that engine in a true sports car or supercar,

500 kilos lighter, so it weighs 1,500 kilograms.

That's how you get the best out of that sort of engine.

So are you saying it's a,

you're not saying it's a poor engine.

You're saying it's a poor application of that engine.

Yeah.

So the car, the M5 and the M6,

they didn't deserve that great engine.

The engine's too good for that car.

Or it's the wrong engine for that car.

It's just a shame that BMW had this amazing engine.

And actually with it, the 4-liter V8,

the smaller version from the E90 and E92 M3,

they had these two engines.

But because BMW doesn't tend to build

thoroughbred supercars and sports cars,

well, it doesn't at all, it hasn't done,

it did one.

Yeah, the M1.

Runaway screaming and haven't done another since.

Yeah, so it's actually quite a common theme

with BMW engines, you know, cracking engines.

A load of the M1s are brilliant engines,

but they never get put into really lightweight

focused sports cars.

No, well, I mean, I think the observations

with the Audi are, except this is an example of,

so that's actually my great engine column

because it is, you know,

that's the same engine that Lamborghini uses.

It's a great engine, but stuck into an Audi S6,

it just, it was never allowed to shine,

never allowed to do what it did best.

And, you know, you always end up feeling sorry for it

because you just know that it was born to do

greater things than that.

Yeah.

Well, at least, yeah, I mean, I wanted to make that point

because at least Audi put its V10 and its V8

into a proper sports car, the R8,

to allow those great engines to do their best work.

And it is a great engine.

Yeah, but BMW never did.

No.

Okay, can I do one?

You can.

Okay, this is another poor application

of actually a perfectly respectable engine.

In fact, I had this engine in a hot hatchback

and really, really liked it.

So I'm going four cylinder Mustang.

Oh, yeah.

2.3 liter.

Yeah, so it's actually a cracking engine

that in the right car.

That engine in a Focus ST, love it,

bring it on in a Mustang.

All wrong.

Yeah.

If you're driving a Mustang,

you want a naturally aspirated five liter V8 engine.

End of.

Yeah, yeah.

And so if you give a 2.3 liter engine,

so less than half the capacity,

half the number of cylinders,

it's never, ever, ever gonna feel right in that car.

So you've got all the drawbacks of a Mustang

with none of the benefits.

Exactly.

It's still really heavy and quite boundaries.

Yeah.

And it just sounds like a full focus

because that's what it's come from.

Yeah.

Okay, over to you.

Now, a car I haven't driven.

Oh.

But I think you've made this point,

so perhaps you'll agree.

McLaren Speedtail.

That's punchy.

Long-legged, long-distance Tora.

Yeah.

Amazing-looking thing.

Yeah.

Wrong engine.

Up.

It is though, isn't it?

When I was driving it,

I can't say I sat there thinking,

gosh, what a pity, what a great car,

but it's really?

But come on, a car like that once.

What should it?

Okay, tell me what it should have.

A lovely V12, a smooth, silky V12.

Naturally aspirated.

Yeah.

How do you get 1,000 horsepower?

I don't care.

Oh, okay.

Does anyone really care?

Okay, no, but it doesn't have to be NA.

I mean, the 12 in the current vanquish,

that would do.

That would do.

But then what would it weigh?

I don't care.

Well, yeah, but it's a McLaren.

Yeah, but the point being that V8,

that 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 is-

I do know what you mean.

It's a peaky engine, isn't it?

It's quite a sort of gravelly course-angry thing.

Except with the hybrid attached to it,

that does actually make a big difference.

It smooths it out a bit.

It smooths it out,

and also it gives it that feeling at sort of,

it gets rid of the turbo lag,

which that engine is prone to.

Yeah, it is, yeah.

And it just provides that sort of little bit

of a low-down oomph,

which you wouldn't get if the hybrid wasn't there.

I do know what you're saying.

In the theory is that would that car be even greater

if it had a naturally aspirated multi-cylinder engine in it?

I mean, you only have to look at the reception

that the Bugatti Tourbillon has received,

which they put a naturally aspirated V16 hybrid into,

and the world is clamoring for it,

to know that the point you make is a very, very good point.

All I would say is that if you drive it,

the result is more convincing

than perhaps it might seem on paper.

Okay, fair enough.

I think ultimately McLaren installed that engine

because it's the only engine it had.

Oh, completely.

If it had a 12, surely it would have gone in.

They'd have used it, yeah.

And with that sort of volume there,

we're never gonna make a 12.

Okay, I'm going a little bit back in time.

And I'm going to upset a few people here

because I know that this car has some reason has,

we use this word quite a lot on the podcast these days,

but it has some kind of sort of slightly cult-y following.

Lancia 832.

Ooh.

Yeah.

So this was a Lancia Tamer or Thema,

depending on how you pronounce it.

One of the family of cars,

which also included the Alfa Romeo 164,

the Saab 9000 and the Fiat Cromer.

But this particular car came with a 3.0-litre 32-valve Ferrari V8,

hence the 832 name for it,

except it still drove the front wheels

in a otherwise pretty nondescript

barge-like Italian stroke Swedish saloon.

And the biggest problem with it actually

was what they had to do with the chassis

to try to somehow ameliorate the torque steer.

It's amazing to think about this now

because it actually only had 215 horsepower,

which isn't very much.

But back in, when would it have been?

I guess about 1989, 1990.

They couldn't put even that amount of power

through the front wheels of a car

unless they made the steering column out of licorice,

or that's how it felt.

So this car was a car,

not only with front wheel drive,

but no steering feel at all.

The steering felt completely unconnected.

I can remember gonna drop a huge name here,

but I can remember talking to Rowan Atkinson

because he had one of these things

and he absolutely loved it.

And so Rowan, if you're listening to this, I apologize,

but to me it just was absolutely

the wrong application of that engine

and bitterly disappointing.

They're a two-liter turbo version

with, I think, 175 horsepower.

And that was just a nice, honest car.

But this car promised so much.

When you open the bonnet,

there would be this Ferrari engine

with the red cam covers.

They also, and this is the only time

it's happened in Ferrari history,

they did a new crankshaft for it.

So it was a cross-plane crank,

not a flat-plane crank.

So it didn't sound like a Ferrari V8.

It sounded like a sort of Detroit V8.

It made that traditional V8 noise.

And they did that for refinement reasons.

It's still revved to like sort of seven and a half thousand.

It was a terrific engine.

Absolutely brilliant engine.

I can remember thinking to myself,

if they actually stuck this in a 308, it would be good.

But in a mass-produced front wheel drive,

pretty average Italian saloon.

I think that's probably the greatest example

of a car that did not deserve its engine.

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Yeah, off top of your head,

how many front wheel drive V8s have there ever been?

Some US stuff maybe?

I've got another one on my list.

Have you?

Yeah.

Oh, let's have it.

Do you want it now?

Yes.

Cadillac STS.

Oh, I thought so.

The engine in that,

that had a thing called the North Star V8.

Yeah.

4.6-litre quad cam, 32-valve V8.

Oh my God, the noise of that thing.

It was just like, it sounded like a Le Mans spec Corvette

and it was in a front wheel drive Cadillac Saloon.

That sounds terrible.

Have you driven one?

Yes.

So we're not told you the story.

This is where we got caught speeding

going quite fast in the North of England.

Oh, I have heard the story.

It was in that convoy.

Yes, okay.

I wasn't in it at the time,

but yeah, so we did a group test

with a Lexus and a BMW and a Rolls-Royce and the Caddy.

And I'm not going to get into that now,

but yeah, it was, I mean, I wanted to drive it

and I enjoyed driving it

because the engine was so amazing.

And if nothing else,

you could absolutely be guaranteed

to be orally enthused

for every moment you were in the car.

But otherwise it was just a big old American barge

with incorrect wheel drive

as so many of them had at that time.

And it was just rubbish.

Just the idea of a front wheel drive V8 is hilarious.

Yeah, but that North Star V8, wow.

What an engine.

Just not in that car.

One of the absolute greats.

And if they had actually bothered to stick it

in anything decent,

it would be revered

as one of the great engines of its era now.

Wow.

Whereas, you know,

the kind of like side note

that it has sounded become.

So they just wasted it.

Yeah.

Can I suggest another one?

Oh yeah, go on.

Do you know what?

I'm not sure I've ever driven this engine.

So I'm sort of out of my depth a little bit here.

I want to propose it to you, I suppose.

And I want to see what you think.

The Alfa Romeo Busso V6.

Oh yeah, on my list.

Is it?

Yeah, and how many cars do you want it to be in?

Yeah, so many cars.

So many cars.

But all of them undeserving.

Never a great one.

I did want to propose one that I'll come onto.

Okay, well, no, I can name a great one.

Okay, we'll come to that.

Okay.

So the point about this Busso V6.

Good power, you know, up to 250 horsepower

in the later days.

A lovely tuneful soundtrack.

I have heard them beautiful to look at.

They even look good under the bonnet

with all that polished pipe work.

Yeah, great looking, you know, very characterful engine.

And it did go into a lot of cars

and quite a few sporting cars.

But think about what these sporting cars were.

The 156 GTA, the 147 GTA,

the Alpha GT, Alpha GT-V and Spyder.

They're not great sports cars.

Brara?

Yeah.

Was that the same engine or was it a new one?

No.

So, I mean, none of these are great cars.

They're all related.

They're all the same.

No, none of these.

Yeah, I absolutely agree with you.

It's just total misapplication.

You know, they have this wonderful resource.

I mean, in the early days,

it did go into some great cars.

You know, Alpha 75.

Yeah.

Fabulous car.

Alpha SZ.

So, that's the one that I put a question mark next to.

Is that the only time that engine was really put to,

you know, its full potential was exploded?

No, a three-litre 75 is a pretty good car.

Really?

A three-litre 75 is a good car.

Yeah.

SZ, which is basically a three-litre 75 in party gear,

is a wonderful car.

Even the GT-V6, which is the first car that it turned up in,

in, where would that be?

Early, very early 1980s.

That was hobbled by the fact that it had a transaxle,

which was great in theory,

but the gearbox quality was,

the transmission, the shift quality was so poor as a result.

But then it was a two and a half liter,

and even then it sounded wonderful.

But then, you know,

it followed the course of Alfa Romeo,

which, you know, stopped making great cars.

I mean, it was quite interesting in a 164,

particularly given the previous conversation

we've had about the 832 Tama or Thima,

because the 164 was obviously spun off the same program.

And that's like a terrible talk, dear,

problems as well, with the three-litre in it.

I mean, I can remember trying to figure a car

that we had, trying to do the acceleration runs,

and needing the entire width,

both lanes of Milbrook's mile straight,

just to, you know, get it to accelerate

hard on a straight line.

Yeah, it's a fine, it's a great, great candidate for this,

because that engine, after its initial applications,

never went in a car that was worthy of its qualities.

That's such a shame, isn't it?

Go on.

Okay, so I'm gonna do the reverse now.

I'm gonna do a car

that should never have had the engine to went into it.

Bentley Arnaj Green Label.

Oh, okay, so that's a very specific one.

It's a very specific one.

In fact, it wasn't called the Green Label initially,

it was just the Arnaj.

So this is the very first Arnaj,

which had a BMW 4.4-litre twin-turbo installation

by Cosworth, whereas obviously,

all Bentley's previously had had the 6.75-litre V8 in it.

And here was an off-the-shelf BMW engine.

And it wasn't that it was a bad engine,

it should just never have gone anywhere near a Bentley.

And the proof of the pudding was that

when Volkswagen bought Bentley,

the first thing that they did was say,

right, we're gonna put the V8 back in it.

Now, the Arnaj was never, ever designed

to take the big V8.

Volkswagen spent more money re-engineering that car

to take the big V8 than Vickers spent

developing the entire Arnaj in the first place.

So it more than doubled the production costs of the car,

just so they could put the old engine back in it.

And that, because there was a brief period of time

when the BMW engine and the old 6.75-litre V8 cars

were sold side by side,

that's when they became known as the Green Label

and the Red Label.

The Green Label being the BMW.

And this is gonna really amaze you.

It turned out that nobody wanted the BMW engine anymore.

They'd all much rather have

the big old Rolls-Royce engine in it.

And so that was the end of that.

And it was just, yeah, it was characterless.

It had 350 horsepower, the performance reasonable,

but it was just totally inappropriate

for that kind of car,

which is, you know, this wonderful wafty Luxo bar.

You just wanna sort of go around

and sort of twitch of a toe with, you know, 1500 revs

and just, you know, sail on a wave of torque.

And it didn't do that.

So yeah, completely inappropriate.

That story does demonstrate how seriously

VW took the whole Bentley project.

It really, really wanted to respect Bentley's heritage

and not just butcher it and, you know,

rebadge a lot of cars.

Yeah, and gain the confidence

of the Bentley loving, you know,

what better way of going, guys, we get this

than by righting the greatest wrong immediately

and having the resources.

Because economically, it was probably nuts

to do what they did, except for reputational enhancement.

I thought it was a brilliant move.

Right, keep going.

Okay, Jaguar XJ220.

Ah, a fine example.

They, do you remember where that car was first shown?

Yeah, Birmingham, 1988.

And it was gonna have a V12,

it was gonna be four-wheel drive.

It had a V12 in it.

It had a six-liter, four-cam, 48-valve V12.

Yeah.

And then it went away to be developed

and it came back with a three-and-a-half liter

twin-turbo V6.

Yeah.

Some people called it a Metro engine,

which wasn't entirely fair.

Well, because people, I might get in trouble

if I say this, I know some people get unbelievably hot

under the car.

I mean, basically this engine,

which was a three-and-a-half liter,

still four-cam, four-valve-per-cylinder engine,

was developed.

I found this out quite recently

and a few people have said,

I can't believe you didn't know that.

It was developed from the old Buick VA,

the Rover VA, which was a VA

and B had push rods and a single camshaft.

And yet they developed this four-cam,

four-valve-per-cylinder, three-and-a-half liter V6

when it had been a three-and-a-half liter push rod V8.

That's weird.

It is completely weird, but it is also true.

And it just sounded like

you were pouring a bucket of bolts through a cement mixer.

I remember Martin Brundle, one of his DVDs

that I got for Christmas a million years ago,

he drove one and said,

I think you said it sounds like a skeleton

dancing in a biscuit tin.

Yeah, well, very good.

Very good, yeah.

The first sort of thing.

Yeah, exactly.

It did the numbers, it had the power.

I think it had more power than the V12 was ever gonna have.

It made the car massively lighter.

They were able to massively shorten the wheelbase.

It was a much better car for having that engine in it,

all in all regards,

other than the characteristics of the engine itself,

which was so, if you're gonna go and buy

a mid-engine supercar,

stroke hypercar like that,

which 30-something years ago,

the company wanted 403,000 pounds for.

Oh my God.

And then we're gonna make,

what did they make, 350 of them?

You know, you don't want an engine

which sounds like a washing machine.

No.

Actually, not as good as a washing machine.

And it did spoil that sensory experience

which is so important to those sorts of cars,

which is a shame because,

I've driven an XJ2, but I've driven them then

and I've driven them much more recently.

And I think they are really underrated cars.

If you look at the fact that they're competition history,

I mean, David Coulthard won his class at the Morin one,

they got disqualified in the technicality,

but nevertheless, the car had the pace

and was a deserved winner of that category.

If you look at how few they made,

if you look at how rare they are,

if you look at how fast they went,

they were the fastest thing you could get

until the McLaren F1 came along.

And if you look at what you pay for one,

compared to anything else remotely similar at the time,

like a Ferrari F50, I mean, they are, you know,

they have never ever gotten over the reputational damage

that we've done by putting that V6 in them.

Didn't depositors sue Jaguar

when it was announced that the V12 was gone?

No, Jaguar tried to sue them.

Oh, because they wanted to pull their deposits?

Well, they didn't go through the cars,

they withdrew and there was gonna be this bit,

I'm not sure whether they ever got to court or not,

but I mean, talk about a PR disaster.

A nightmare.

Jaguar suing its own customers.

Can you imagine how well that went down?

And so, yeah, people call it a Metro engine

because it was, the engine was fitted to the Metro 6R4,

the Group B rally car.

A related version of it, yes.

And of course, that's not really a Metro, is it?

No, exactly.

It was an engine out of a mini-metro where it'd come all.

Yeah.

Keep rattling through them,

I know you've got plenty on your list.

Okay, here's one we both driven.

Yeah.

And we are going back in time,

you have driven one of these.

And I think this might be the greatest example

of the greatest engine in the worst car.

I think it's gonna take a lot of time.

Great engine, bad car gone.

Yeah.

Lamborghini LM002.

Oh.

Yeah.

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Oh, oh, oh, oh, rally, auto parts.

I mean, that is an underwhelming car to drive.

Isn't it?

And actually this is not just a great engine

in a bad car.

It's also completely the wrong application

of a great engine.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It should never go on to that car in the first place.

One thing that's when I drove the LM002,

the one thing that just struck me about it

was just I hadn't expected was just how slow.

So slow.

It's an Lamborghini, it looks like that

and it's got a V12 and you get anything?

It's all you got.

It was a bit rubbish as well.

It was like nine seconds to 60 or something, wasn't it?

It was just, it was just rubbish.

Yeah, that's such a good example.

Massively cumbersome, hideously ugly, bleh.

Truck.

And I say this, I'm utterly disparaging,

but the truth is, somebody said to me tomorrow,

do you want to come and drive an LM002?

I'd drop everything.

Which is stupid, I know, but yeah.

That's a good one.

Okay.

Oh, I've got another good one.

Yep.

Bit before your time, but not that old.

Mercedes-Benz R63 AMG.

Do you remember the R class?

Does that go into?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So that sort of MPV thing.

It was the big Mercedes-MPV.

I mean, hideously ugly, actually very quiet

and very comfortable.

And I thought it had a bit of a bad rap at the time

because it was just so awful to look at.

But the AMG version of that, with that,

I just don't think, what engine would that have?

Would that have been the five and a half liter

twin supercharged one?

Or the naturally aspirated 6.2?

I should know, shouldn't I?

What I do know is that whichever one of those engines it is,

it did not deserve a fate like being stuck

under the bonnet of an R class.

No, it was the M156, which is the 6.2.

Yeah.

It's a great engine.

Do you know what?

Can they still use in GT3 cars today?

Yeah, it is, yeah.

I was toying with mentioning this engine

because so what I said about BMW M

is that they have often had fantastic engines

but never put them in thoroughbred sports cars.

Whereas AMG, they have fantastic engines

and they put them in anything.

Yes.

They just chuck them in everything.

Absolutely everything because I guess they can.

From the SLS, a true front-mid-engine sports car,

all the way to an MPV and SUVs and saloons and estate,

they chuck their great engines

in everything they possibly can.

Yeah.

Maybe they should be a bit more discernible.

Perhaps, yes.

Do you want me to do another?

Yeah.

Okay, this is controversial.

This is really controversial.

Good, good.

Okay, this is, I was about to say

good car with a bad engine.

Okay, I think it's a bad engine.

I think people are going to struggle to accept

that this could have been a good car.

Let alone be a good car.

DeLorean.

What a story.

The DeLorean.

Yeah.

So this had a, the Duvrain,

the PRV,

V6 single cam.

Absolutely nothing of an engine.

Weedy thing.

160 horsepower.

Put into the back of a car,

which was already much heavier

than it was meant to be,

much heavier than it was designed to be

because it had had to be completely redesigned by Lotus

because the original design was totally impractical.

And then the engine was utterly inadequate.

They were going to do a turbo version of it,

but it never made it.

I don't even know,

they might have had a mule or something,

but it certainly never got anywhere near a showroom.

I mean, I've driven a DeLorean and believe me,

that is not, it's only problem.

It's got lots and lots of problems.

But what I would say,

and what I said at the time,

what I've said before about them

is that you can sort of feel,

even when you drive it,

and even when it's just sort of disappointing you

at every turn,

you can sort of feel,

get a sense for the car that it was meant to be.

And it is absolutely my belief

that if it had been developed properly

and if it had had a decent enough engine in it,

I'm not saying it would ever have been a world beta,

but it would today be regarded

in a completely different way.

And history would have been,

or maybe because it wouldn't have been that rubbish,

maybe it would never have made it

into the back to the future films

and people would barely even remember

what a DeLorean is these days.

But it wasn't a great car,

but it was a terrible engine

which dragged the entire thing down.

And the car itself,

which did handle a bit,

and we have a contributor,

Jez, who has one

and tried to set a sub 10 minute

of the Nürburgring,

and they do have a charm

and they are nothing like as rubbish

as I think an awful lot of people,

because I think they've come

with sort of the supercar equivalent

of people used to make,

so it's go-to-jokes.

It's a DeLorean and everybody knows

something funny about one.

But actually, I just think it's,

I think it's just a really, really sad story

of what might have been for that car

and also obviously particularly

the poor people in Northern Ireland

who were given all the hope in the world

that this would be a way out

of the grinding poverty of that area

and into a bright or a brighter future.

And it never came to be.

It's a good example.

I'm glad you mentioned Jez, Jez Medinger.

He's one of our newer contributors.

And he's brilliant.

If you haven't checked out,

go do it on the website now.

He's becoming a very prominent contributor, isn't he?

Across the platform.

And he seems like a bit of lunatic.

You're right, he took his DeLorean to the Nürburgring

to try and do a sub 10 minute lap

and he wrote a fantastic story about it,

which is on the website and app still.

But he also, I think he essentially hot rodded

his DeLorean because there was another version

of the PRV, maybe it was out of a Volvo or something

that does slot straight in,

but it has a good chunk more power.

So it might be that the DeLorean example,

the engine in that was dreadful

and there were better versions of the PRV, I don't know,

but no one talks about that engine

in particularly glowing terms, do they?

No, I mean, there were versions.

I mean, so they did a version of it in the Alpine A610

which was turbocharged and they did a GTA, didn't they?

And it was quite good then,

but it needed that extra oomph

and put in the back of a light car like an A610,

it actually did quite good work

and I thought it was fine that,

but in naturally aspirated form

in the back of a heavy DeLorean, sadly not.

How many more have you got?

Oh, how many do you want?

Let's keep going.

We're gonna go, okay.

So this is both a really good and a really bad engine.

Mm-hmm, right, okay.

It's a really good engine,

but it's an absolutely terrible engine.

Mm-hmm.

And it's the V8 that went into the Triumph Stag.

Oh, blimey.

Okay.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

I know what a Stag is.

Yeah, Stag.

Stag.

What, how could an engine be both good and terrible?

Okay, so all you need to know is that

most Stags, I don't wanna say most Stags,

there was a time when most Stags

just had Rover V8s in them because they,

the problem was that they were just terribly unreliable.

Yeah.

This was a lovely V8 engine.

I say this, I've never actually driven the Stag,

so I don't actually know what I'm talking about.

But by reputation, it was very sweet.

I know it sounded really good.

It had decent power,

and it was also just really appropriate

to the kind of car that the Stag was,

which was this slightly sporting,

but more sort of grand touring oriented,

you know, open roadster,

lovely car, lovely, in theory, means of powering it.

But it just, if we had Richard Bremner on this podcast,

our fellow contributor who had been on the podcast before,

he would be able to spend the rest of this podcast

telling you what was wrong with that engine.

But it was basically, it was cooling related.

It might have been something to do,

and I may get this completely wrong,

but was it something to do with the fact that

because the V8 was essentially

two four cylinder engines put together,

and all the cooling went to one half of it,

and not to the other, I don't know,

but it just didn't fill people with great confidence

for its ability to get from one place to another without

sending you, you know, leaving you

steaming at the side of the road.

But it was a great engine when it was working properly,

which probably wasn't often enough.

Another example of that is the,

and you might have driven one of this,

in fact you probably have,

the six cylinder TBR engine.

Yeah, I've driven one, absolutely.

I mean, that's an absolute brute of a motor, isn't it?

Yeah, it came to mind the moment you said

a great engine just not reliable enough.

Yeah, that was the problem with that engine, wasn't it?

The Al-Melling, the only person I've ever referred

to as the late Al-Melling,

he's the only person who's death

I've announced without him actually being dead.

Oh dear, that's unfortunate.

Yeah, I can't believe why I did that, and.

He must have been so surprised to hear that.

Yes, I still feel bad about that,

but he didn't seem to have.

I think TBR owners will point out that

a lot of the reliability issues of that engine

have largely been resolved by specialists.

Yeah, I think they have, yeah.

But we can only really judge these.

I mean, it's like the 996, 997 Porsche flat-six engine.

Those engines and those issues are entirely resolvable now,

but that doesn't mean that on a podcast

talking about the kinds of engines

that these cars have when they were new,

we can't talk about it now.

No, quite right.

And they did have reliability engines,

reliability issues.

Absolutely they did.

Can you remember what actually went wrong with them?

No, not specifically.

I don't know.

Sorry, but while you were talking,

I mean, I don't know why this came to mind,

but it's actually relevant for this podcast.

I was following the other day

a Mercedes SLK sports car.

Roofed down.

Not my kind of sports car, but a lot of people like them.

Don't say that.

Richard Brennan's got one.

Sorry.

No, he doesn't like it either.

I was judging the festival with him last weekend,

and he was telling me just how much he didn't like his SLK.

But he still has it, good.

But the telling thing about this SLK

was the little badge on the back that said CDI.

Oh, that's a good call.

Yeah, and it just reminded me

that there was this era, I don't know, 20 years ago,

something like that, when particularly German manufacturers

were quite insistent on making diesel engines

available in their convertibles.

Yeah, Audi did it with the Audi Coupe, didn't they?

The Audi Coupe convertible, I guess it was, yeah.

Just, it's just wrong.

Roofed down.

Fire it up, bang, bang, bang, bang.

Yeah, yeah.

Absolutely right, that's a really good shout.

Right, let's keep going.

Okay, Audi S2 Coupe.

Oh, blimey.

Yeah, I know what you're talking about,

but I couldn't tell you what engine's in that.

Well, it's the engine, it's the 20 valve engine

that came straight out of the Quattro.

Yeah, okay.

So this is 1990.

I do know about this actually,

because my father had one.

And I just thought it was a terrible car.

And the contrast to the last of the Quattro,

so that engine, the 20 valve,

Audi Quattro when it came out in 1980,

had a 10 valve, a single cam engine.

And then right towards the end of production

at the end of that decade,

they did this twin cam 20 valve engine for it,

which was absolutely belting.

Sounded even better, much better torque delivery,

more power, just win, win, win, all the way along the line.

And those late Quattros were really, really good cars.

Because the early Quattros, if truth be told,

because they had a very basic agricultural 50-50 torque split,

they weren't as good as their reputation had.

They gained their reputation because they were so novel

because they were the first four-wheel drive car.

But the later cars,

which had torsion differentials in them

and had that 20 valve engine cracking things, excellent.

They then decided to make the S2 Coupe.

Put that engine in it,

but took all the fun out of everything.

It was just a pudding.

And my father had one because I think he had one

because what he really wanted was a 911,

but didn't feel he could afford a 911.

So he got one of these things and he used it for a bit,

but there was never any love for it at all.

And I don't think he hung on to it very long.

And I used to drive it around.

And it's just one of those cars.

It's the context.

If the Quattro hadn't existed,

if I'd never driven a 20 valve Quattro,

I probably wouldn't be that down on it now.

But it was just, even though it was,

I thought it was a really good-looking car,

the S2 Coupe.

Yeah, it does look good.

Yeah, it's a smart-looking thing.

Frankly, unlike the Quattro,

which I always thought was a bit ramshackle,

just that edge, that poise,

that enthusiasm to chuck you down a road,

just all gone.

It was just another comfortable,

slightly poor riding, actually.

Totally uninspiring Audi with a lovely engine in it.

Good one.

Let's do a few more.

Okay, you've got some.

No, I've run out, so we're going to concentrate on yours.

Okay, well, okay, I'm absolutely fine with that.

Porsche 924.

Yeah, yes.

With a van engine from a VW.

Volkswagen van engine, 125 horsepower.

So the 924, let's not forget,

it was never meant to be a Porsche.

Yeah, it's going to be a VW.

It's going to be a VW.

It's going to be a VW sports car.

It came along in the mid-70s,

which as some will remember,

basically it arrived on the back of the OPEC oil crisis

of the 1970, 1973, 1974,

by which stage the last car in the world

that Volkswagen wanted to have on its books

was an impractical 2 plus 2 sports car,

but it had been developed for Volkswagen by Porsche.

Porsche, on the other hand,

were quite keen on the idea

of a much more affordable Porsche

to sell in those sort of straightened times.

And so what was wrong for Volkswagen

seemed very right for Porsche

because here was an absolutely turnkey delivered car,

which they'd been paid to develop.

Which they could just go and stick their own badges on.

And that's how the 924 came along.

And the only drawback was

because it had been developed for Volkswagen

around Volkswagen engines,

it had an engine out of a Volkswagen Van in it,

which just wasn't good enough.

And yeah, it was just,

it was a 924 as a really fine handling car,

you know, trans axle, gearbox between the rear axles,

beautifully balanced,

you know, light, nimble, lovely,

but was never gonna convince anybody as a Porsche.

It is interesting that it was that quirk,

that, you know,

almost by accident that the 924 became a Porsche.

That then gave us the 944 and the 968.

Yeah. Those might never have happened.

And you know, and all the things

that they did to the 924,

before any of that,

to try to spice up the show a bit.

So, you know, the 924 turbo,

the Carrera GT and the GTS,

you know, they went racing at Le Mans with them.

And then, actually,

I think the first test I,

it was the first test I ever did

as a motoring journalist,

the first twin test I ever did

was a Porsche 924S versus a Honda Civic CRX.

And the 924S had the Porsche engine in it.

Okay.

So, Porsche developed the 2.5-litre four-cylinder engine

that would go on to power all the 944s, all the 968s.

But it was first actually put under the bonnet

of a 924 in 19,

I don't know.

But, and then it was sold side by side

with the 944.

So, you could have a cut-priced Porsche

with the 924S.

Or you could go and get a 944,

which was a sort of slightly,

well, it was the same shell,

the same sort of size,

but it had, you know,

it had flared arches and looked much more of the part.

And that was a good engine,

but no, in original 1975,

base 924, not up to it.

Good one.

Okay, more?

Yeah.

Golly, okay.

Scraping the bottom of the barrel a bit now.

Okay.

W12 Faten.

Wow.

I wonder how many of those were ever built?

A few.

Yeah.

I think they were sort of used

as chauffeur cars in Germany.

Yeah, I'm sure.

So this was the W12 engine,

basically as we think W12,

we think Bentley, don't we?

But it was a Volkswagen engine originally

and in naturally aspirated form,

it went into the Audi A8

and it went into the Faten.

The Faten itself is,

it's just such a curious car.

It's one of those things,

it was a Piek Vanity project.

He believed that he could get people to,

if they made the quality right,

if the product was good enough,

that people would spend a huge amount of money

buying a car that might otherwise be seen as a rival

for a top of the range Mercedes or Audi or BMW,

but with a Volkswagen badge on it.

And in that regard,

and it's quite rare that he got anything badly wrong,

but he got that spectacularly wrong.

And the car,

despite the fact it was beautifully built,

it was incredibly heavy.

Nobody wanted it because nobody wanted to,

please the person who turned up

at the golf club on the Volkswagen.

And, but they offered it with a range of engines.

They put the V10 in it,

they put the V12 on it.

The V6.

They put the V6 in it in petrol and diesel form.

They put the W12.

Yeah, I mean it was-

It's so strange that they offered a V12 and a W12.

No, they didn't.

No, V12.

No, there's no V12.

So I said V12, I meant W12.

Yeah, so they didn't.

But it was in naturally aspirated form.

It wasn't massively powerful,

but it made decent power.

And it sounded really nice

and it just had never, ever, ever have been put

under the bonnet of a car as homespunners as a F8.

Sometimes when I'm, when does this happen?

Maybe when I'm on the motorway

and it's late at night and the weather's foul

and I just want to get home

and I'm in something a bit sporting.

My mind does sometimes wander to the F8 on.

Well, on being asleep in the back of one.

Well, that or, you know,

spending four grand on one as my motorway car.

Well, my brother did that.

My brother had a F8 and had a three liter diesel F8

for a really quite a long time,

which he spent buttons on.

For exactly the same reason he's all thinking of it.

I don't know why he got rid of it in the end,

but it didn't go wrong.

He really enjoyed it.

I mean, it wasn't very connected.

You know, you wouldn't get Bluetooth

or anything like that,

but he really enjoyed just having it to smoke about it.

Okay.

Should we do one more?

Okay. Well, yeah.

So this is before even my time, let alone yours,

but you'll know what I'm talking about.

Citroen DS.

Yeah.

The Deus.

Yeah.

The Goddess.

This car, when it came out in the 1950s

was in design terms, it was a whole new level.

It was utterly beautifully.

Technologically, it was very, very advanced,

but it came with this dreary 1.9 liter four cylinder

mass produced piece of nothing engine.

And I always just thought it was such a shame.

I haven't driven many DSs,

but I've been in a few and I've driven,

I have to actually be honest, I think I've driven one,

but it was such a lovely thing to go about the place in,

but there's really no performance.

It doesn't sound nice at all.

And it's just struck me as being here as a car,

which is wonderful in basically every single regard,

apart from one, and to an extent,

it lets the entire thing down.

Yeah.

So yeah, it's just such a shame

because it was an absolutely outstanding car.

And I think of its reputation now,

for its beauty and for its technology

and the advances that it brought.

And I just think to myself, how much greater,

even than it is now, would it be remembered

if it had an engine which was even half as good

as the car that it was installing?

So broadly speaking, this current trend

for ripping petrol drivetrains out of classics

and installing EV powertrains.

That'd be a good candidate.

Yeah, generally speaking, I'm not in favour of that.

Ripping the heart out of a 911 or a Mercedes SL or something,

but there are some cars that are ripe for it

and the DS is one of the best examples.

Yeah, it would actually be really cool.

It would suit it.

You'd actually probably improve the car

because it would be even better

at what DS is a really good at,

which is just wafting around.

And you lose the drone

and it would probably have better performance too.

And the fact that it weighed more would be neither here nor there

because it's not a sports car.

So who cares?

Yeah, good shot.

There you go.

Electric DS, everybody.

Anyone up for it?

I'll have a go.

Have we exhausted your list then?

Well, there weren't two other things in it,

but I don't think they need to delay us now.

Okay, good.

That was fun.

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Auto parts.

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55:26

Great cars with rubbish engines (and vice versa) #274

Alfa Romeo 147 GTA

Alfa Romeo 156 GTA

About this episode

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