Caterham RST V8

[Miki Biasion]

Da Evo UK, http://www.evo.co.uk/

For many years, a V8 built from a pair of motorbike engines has been a tantalising dream. The potential of two powerful, in-line fours spliced to a common crankshaft is obvious and very appealing; low weight, high output and, importantly compared with four-cylinder 'bike engines so far installed in cars, much more torque. Yet despite the first prototype appearing the best part of ten years ago, nobody has been confident enough to put one into production.

Until now. This Caterham is fitted with a 2-litre V8 that weighs a mere 74kg yet develops a stonking 340bhp backed up by 190lb ft of torque. And it's very compact, too, measuring 19in long, 19in high and 19in wide. There are plenty of clues that this wide-bodied 'SV' Seven isn't standard, principally the bonnet scoop but also the many extra louvered vents let into the bonnet and sides. However, it's when the bonnet is lifted off that your pulse picks up. The tiny V8 is buried down between the chassis tubes, almost impossibly low - the tops of the eight carbonfibre throttle trumpets have a good couple of inches of headroom to the underside of the aluminium bonnet. Think what that does for the centre of gravity.

When it fires up, this compact V8 - dubbed the RST V8 - sounds urgent and inertia-less, like a four-cylinder bike engine but with an  

extra undercurrent of bass. It throttle-blips hungrily, the revs soaring and falling very rapidly, the blat of the twin exhaust pipes overridden by the staccato, machine-gun-like bark of the eight throttles gulping air.

This isn't a woofly V8. Like the V8 in the Ferrari 360, it has a flat-plane crank that synchronises firing pulses in opposing banks of cylinders so that it remains balanced at very high revs. While the 360 goes to 9000rpm, this pocket-sized V8 breaks through the 10K barrier. It would go to 15,000rpm(!) but in this application it's capped at 10,250rpm, partly because 340bhp is more than enough. The car's geared for 148mph in top and it has attained this speed on more than a few occasions during the engine validation process. Without a windscreen it would run to 160mph.

[Barn]

AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH.......

Scusate, sono venuto......

Barn

[alura]

vedo che gli piace complicarsi la vita  

[Emi]

cristo un aereo!

[Miki Biasion]

Questo passaggio poi è una figata

It would go to 15,000rpm(!) but in this application it's capped at 10,250rpm, partly because 340bhp is more than enough.