Maddest cars: your suggestions
Posted by Bill Thomas at 3:30PM on Friday 25 January, 2008 35 Comments
It's not easy making a car magazine or website. It can be tough.
Get out the violins, you're shouting - you've got the best job in the world!
Yeah, maybe, OK, point taken, but more often than not, you guys - in fact you, reading this - have a lot better ideas than we do and we're happy to admit we need more thinking. This is one of those times.
Have a click through this gallery of the most insane, mental, completely unhinged and exceptionally ridiculous cars we could muster - they all appear in this month's Top Gear magazine.
We did our best. But we know there are more out there and we want you to suggest them. We'll publish the results right here, and possibly in the mag, too.
Suggest away. No limits, remember. Don't hold back. Let us know what we missed.
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35 Comments for "Maddest cars: your suggestions"
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I've no suggestions for the maddest car, I think it's pretty well covered.... but I was wondering how the '24-cylinder V12' engine in Babs worked??
Jay Leno's tank car is pretty insane.
You might have missed the Vertigo made by Gillet. It can do 0-60 in 3.2 seconds.
And it is the only Belgian-made supercar... well, the only Belgian-made car at all.
Surely the TVR Sagaris should get a mention?
How can you make a list of the maddest cars without including the Lotus Carlton?
What an amazing bunch of cars, though I think the mag and the programme should head down to Pendine again and get the owner of Babs to put it up against some of today's offerings.
What about the Tesla Roadster? Not officially in production yet, but no matter. It does 0-60 in about three seconds, I believe, has only two gears, the first of which you don't really need and, oh, did I mention it was built on a Lotus Elise chassis and powered by 1,000lb of lithium-ion battery cells and a freakin' ginormous electric synchronous motor?
Awesome. And mad.
A good list there, but I think the Metro 6R4 International deserves a mention for being a 410bhp Metro. Also the Vandenbrink Carver for being frankly ridiculous.
You simply can't miss the Pikes Peak Hill Climb wonderboy that is the Suzuki Grand Vitara XL-7. 1,000bhp, a wing bigger than your house, and a front spoiler and air scoop possibly designed to catch children. Please put it in.
For the maddest race car, how about the six-wheeled Tyrrell P34?
Off the track, how about the Monaro VXR500? - take an already insane car that's more at home driving sideways than it is forwards, and stick a supercharger on it.
I think you missed out the Ultima GTR. 0-60 in 2.5 seconds and 0-100 in five - and 0-100-0 in 9.5 seconds! That's what I call quick.
Bristol Fighter T - 1,012bhp and 1,036lb ft of torque in something that looks like it came out of WW2. Need I say more?
There is one you have missed, although I don't think it is actually in production as yet and as far as I know, there is only the one concept in existence: the Hulme F1, designed in New Zealand.
It looks similar to the Caparo T1 and runs a BMW engine. It is described as giving 'the feeling of driving a Formula One Car on the road'!
Clearly forgotten the TVR Cerbera Speed 12!!!! Idiots!
What about the Renault 5 Turbo? The one that had a V6 turbocharged F1 engine fitted in the middle for homologation as a Class A rally car, just before they were banned!
Come on, there's a glaringly obvious Jaguar XJR-15-shaped hole in that list. A car that tries to kill you every time you drive it? Sounds pretty mad to me!
How about the Dauer 962 LM? Essentially a street-legal version of the dominating Porsche 962 race car. 0-60 in 2.6secs, top speed of 251mph, 730bhp from a 3.0-litre turbocharged Porsche inline-six engine!
The Nismo R34 Z-Tune. Little known car. Crushed much more purpose-built machines around Tsukuba circuit with leather, aircon and the lot.
I would have thought the Porsche Carrera GT would have been on the list, or maybe the Mirage GT by Gemballa. But one thing's for sure, the SLK with the modified SLR engine in Dubai should have definitely been on the list. Come on, there's even a video of it beating an Enzo in a drag race.
A great list of insane cars there, but I think that the Pagani Zonda deserves a spot in there. If you accept concept cars, then put the R version in. If only production and already tuned cars, then the F Clubsport.
Also the Veilside RX7.
Perhaps the most properly mad car I've ever seen was a Rover SD1 - just like the one Jeremy drove - with a 27-litre V12 Rolls-Royce tank engine.
100% British, 110% insane.
The Golf GTI W12...
In the late 80s, some nutter in Australia put 5.0-litre V8s mid-mounted into Alfa Romeo Sprites (Sud derivative). As I understand, the Queensland police even trialled some as highway pursuit cars.
I think the Porsche 935 'Moby Dick' deserves a place.
The 240mph, 950bhp racing car holds the record for the highest top speed on the Mulsanne straight (223mph), and once won the 6h Silverstone endurance race by a whole lap.
And it came from 1978.
For what it's worth, Lamborghini's Countach maybe deserves a spot on the list. By today's standards neither its performance nor its price tag are that outrageous, but it redefined 'shocking' for the industry at large by setting the car-porn level at "****!". Of course it seems like an obvious choice, but it only became such after plastering itself on bedroom walls the world over.
How about some of the old Group B Rally Cars? I mean, the RS200 was insane and JC ended up crashing one within two corners of him setting off!
How about 'The Beast', a lunatic fibreglass-bodied missile built by John Dodd and hosting a 27-litre Merlin V12 engine? Apparently it would tear up to and past 200mph and then the tyres would start to disintegrate. It would also idle at 120rpm...
The B Engineering Edonis. 720bhp and 590lb ft. As well as 223mph. It was built with the left-over chassis from the EB110, so numbers are quite limited - 21.
What about the Callaway C4 Sledge Hammer or even the Dauer 962 - both are 250+mph cars? Or the Saleen S7TT.... what a monster!!!
You forgot to mention the Hennessy Venom 1000 in your maddest cars piece. It's a twin-turbo Viper with 1,100bhp! How could you leave that out?
I hope nobody's forgotten the new Brabus Unimog!
Oh, and since Hendo asked how a V12 with 24 cylinders works: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposed_piston_engine
How about anything made by Rinspeed? Those crazy Swiss... Take, for instance, the Presto - it transforms from a two- to a four-seater at the touch of a button. Or the Splash (which Richard Hammond called the 'Maddest Car'), which can do 200kph on land and 45 knots on water!
You managed to forget the Chaparral 2J. Over-powered, what looks like jets on the back end and a length shorter than an RS200 Ford makes for a car that likes to spin under braking more than a spin-drier enjoys spinning. Oh, and it also does over 200mph, good for the sixties, with only THREE gears.
Porsche 959 - 0-60 in 3.6 seconds in 1986 equals mental.
The Weineck Cobra 780 cui would be the maddest car in my book. It's a 13-litre V8 in a featherlight AC/Shelby Cobra shell. 1,100hp + 1,760Nm + less than 1,000kg to tug = mad.