For all you Twingo lovers

"Rustholes-Are-Weight-Reduction" (rustholes-are-weight-reduction)
03/19/2018 at 15:48 • Filed to: None

I don’t know if that’s been posted in the past. If not, here you go, if yes, it’s worth repeating:

Some crazy French company once put a Range Rover V8 in the back of a first gen Twingo. The company who built it is called Lazareth, and you could buy one for 70.000€ to drive it on track, since this obviously wasn’t street legal.

The 3,5L V8 gave the Twingo 200hp for 850kg.

They also gave the car 2 bucket seats and racing harnesses, and a 5 speed manual gearbox.

I don’t know how many were produced and if anyone put the money on the table to buy one, but it must be terrifyingly fun to drive

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DISCUSSION (11)

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > Rustholes-Are-Weight-Reduction
03/19/2018 at 15:58

...Because of course it’s a fuel-injected 3.5 with old-style valve covers. Not, say, a 3.9 or 4.0 (whichever was current when they did this) with the modern covers, because clearly it needs to be fancy and less likely to overheat? I guess?

Rustholes-Are-Weight-Reduction > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht
03/19/2018 at 16:03

Would be interesting to repeat the project with, say, a current gen 550hp supercharged V8

OPPOsaurus WRX > Rustholes-Are-Weight-Reduction
03/19/2018 at 16:22

200 hp in that is probably fun but it seems weak for a V8. I like V8's, dont get me wrong, but wouldn’t a turbo 4 cyl have fit better, been lighter, and given more power?

Rustholes-Are-Weight-Reduction > OPPOsaurus WRX
03/19/2018 at 16:30

Apparently, most of their builds use the Land Rover V8. This one was built around 2008, they could/should have taken a then new Mégane RS engine 2.0 turbo, with 225hp. But that would have probably been more expensive than taking a junkyard V8

OpposResidentLexusGuy - USE20, XF20, XU30 and Press Cars > Rustholes-Are-Weight-Reduction
03/19/2018 at 16:40

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It’s not street legal with that attitude!

Rustholes-Are-Weight-Reduction > OpposResidentLexusGuy - USE20, XF20, XU30 and Press Cars
03/19/2018 at 17:21

I would love it if it was street legal, I have a V6 in stock I would love to but in the back of a first gen Clio, bit I wouldn’t be allowed to drive it

OpposResidentLexusGuy - USE20, XF20, XU30 and Press Cars > Rustholes-Are-Weight-Reduction
03/19/2018 at 17:29

Move to Florida or Tennessee into any place but the 6/96 counties that don’t check emissions.

duurtlang > Rustholes-Are-Weight-Reduction
03/20/2018 at 06:21

What kind of regulations would be broken if you install it neatly with a decent exhaust, brakes, suspension and whatnot?

I bet you could get that registered in the Netherlands, assuming the conversion was done properly. I happen to know a few people in the Netherlands ;) And if registered in one EU country it should make it easier to register it elsewhere.

duurtlang > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht
03/20/2018 at 06:26

Harder or more expensive to source, I guess? This being in Europe. Still though, using a large (for the car) V8 with a mere 200 hp does seem a bit silly and outdated. Even Renault, at the time, had a 2 liter 4 cylinder engine with more power in their midsize bread and butter sedan /hatchback/wagon/coupe. They also used the 3.5L V6 from Nissan.

Rustholes-Are-Weight-Reduction > duurtlang
03/20/2018 at 08:15

To register a modified car in France, you’d have to go to UTAC, and perform some tests. You have to do the same thing if you want to import a car that’s not been sold on the french market (RHD cars, US cars...) it’s time consuming and really expensive.

That’s why there’s no serious modding in France, and why my second bel Air won’t become a LS powered daily driver

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > duurtlang
03/20/2018 at 16:45

It’s not really a question of being outdated as such that confuses me. As far as I’m aware, every factory fuel injected 3.5 has the later style valve covers, which means that either the fuel injection setup was borrowed from another engine, or the covers were. The 3.9 wasn’t terribly uncommon, and I’ve seen a two-door Rangie with one for sale in Spain, which would tend to indicate they were available in Euro markets other than UK. One would have thought sourcing an engine the same size with more power *even if one had to be daft and use a Rover* wouldn’t have been hard.

It’s not difficult to have a Rover V8 with ~90% of max torque below 2,500RPM, which is attractive enough for an NA engine in a light car. Certainly some appealing characteristics regardless, and in the case of a 3.9, a very short relative stroke and quick response.