Driving The Beast! 27-litre V12 Spitfire engined car on the street

[Music] thank you picture the scene you really want a powerful estate car with an ugly front end it's 2023 you could get yourself a BMW M3 touring fantastic but imagine if it's 1972 what'd you do then and you want this car to be really powerful to the point of entering the Guinness world record books you build yourself the Beast of course a car entirely built around a Rolls-Royce 27 000 CC V12 Merlin engine that should be up there in a Spitfire in the sky and that's exactly what this is a car which went on to become the most infamous car in Britain in this episode I'm going to be fortunate enough to drive this out on the road so welcome to a special episode of the late break show I'm Johnny Smith [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] so what actually or who actually is the Beast well really we need to talk about The Man Behind the Beast and The Man Behind the Beast was a chap whose initials were on the front of the car Mr John Dodd and John Dodd took this car as a rolling chassis back in the early 70s and bought it off a chap that built the chassis to put the engine in called Paul Jameson he'd originally met Paul because Paul couldn't get a gearbox to work with this colossal 27 liter V12 Merlin Spitfire engine but John was a gearbox genius and Johnson I reckon I know how I could do that and he devised this step up system with an automatic transmission from an American car in order to be able to transfer the incredible talk from the engine to the axle he bought the car off Paul and then had a body made a completely one-off body to go with a completely one-off chassis but of course it had to package that humongous engine hence why the Bonnet is 10 feet long John Dobb was a larger than life man who sadly passed away uh last year at nearly 90 years old this car has been in the family ever since it's been John's brainchild it's been John's obsession uh his extension of his personality and that's why I wanted to feature this on the show I am going to be able to drive this car later in the video and I'm one of very few people that's been allowed to drive it and John Dobb wasn't afraid of driving this to the point where this car used to in a previous life have a Rolls-Royce front grill on it Rolls-Royce in the early 80s weren't pleased about this and took him to court and John Bean John was like okay the court case ensued and he drove to court in this car in London and may have intentionally broken it down on Fleet Street in front of all the newspapers to get a bit of PR so the first day of Court he turns up in a 27 liter thousand horsepower car the next day he turns up on a horse one horsepower he lost the court case he was made to remove the grill he decided to leave the country and the car then and he went to live in Spain for many many many years until his death in fact So What on earth is this well this body shell was made by a company called fiberglass repairs and fiberglass repairs in in Kent specially made Dragsters dragster bodies and that's why it has this weird kind of like funny car stance but this is actually not the first body shell this car has had because when in the mid 70s John took it to a car show in Sweden he drove it to Sweden of course from England to show it off the king of Sweden asked him to come and say hi because he couldn't get to the car show so we met the king of Sweden of course and on the way back from that the car actually caught fire and the body got damaged and this first body shell looked like a sort of mashup between a Ford Capri and a console and all sorts but he got the insurance money and decided to not only re-body the car in this mad shooting break Style but what he also did was he decided to take the engine which was a meteor engine so a Rolls-Royce meteor V12 for a tank world war tank to the Merlin engine the same derivative of engine but one that was due to live destined to fly in the sky either in a Spitfire or in a Lancaster bomber and that is the engine that this has in it apparently it's a mark 35 Real Deal Merlin without the supercharger on it because there's simply no place to put the bloody supercharger that's why you have all these air holes and everything because it's a heavy breathing engine that needs lots of air because it's used to flying not driving so let's talk about design obviously it's an incredibly weirdly proportioned car the side the profile of it's the weirdest in fact Centerline Wheels front end the suspension on the steering is from an Austin A110 Westminster I think it's independent the back end used to be Jaguar independent rear from an xj-12 for many many years and in fact this acts on it which is a Curry Ford 9-inch modified drag axle was fitted just after he died he'd had it commissioned and was going to fit it but never got around to it and bear in mind this is a chap who I say nearly 90 years old and he still drove the car still drove the car fast and still wanted to try and set some some land speed records and take it up the stripping Center pod so that has the axle on it now side exit exhaust apparently these doors are modified from a Mark III Ford Cortina and we don't actually know because John Dodd didn't really write down a lot of spec about the car it was all up here and that's what we're now finding with John's family who have kindly let me come and see the car today and drive it we're trying to decipher what bits are from where and the start procedure alone is it is an epic story in itself switch it on uh-huh then should we focus in on the buttons oh not fan phone which what you put on there I found it just to make sure it's running okay you can't help the engine so there's one pump there one pump there she's down there it's making noise now what's that noise punch other pumps okay okay then switch them off temporarily put the Prime on which is the last one oh that lights up yeah that lights up the other should light up but they're old and they're done you know and then what you do is you if you give it about five to six second grind switch it off it changes the note both make big clothes on one two right pressure foreign so we don't know what windscreen it is come around here you've got this mad huge almost hurst-like shooting break it's kind of like a reliant Scimitar that's properly gone righty and gone down the gym but I really like it and I especially like the back end it's got a multitude a Mark 1 Ford Capri rear lights and this hatch so it's actually really practical right like I said in the intro if you want a practical but ridiculously powerful estate car hello if we're able to show them there's some great archive photos of this car this was in the Guinness book of records for several years for being the world's most powerful car and probably the biggest engine car or with it being 27 liters just think about that for a second 27 liters with 12 Pistons it's absolutely colossal um and John used to drive it on two-star petrol because it didn't need really really high-end petrol because it was a wartime engine it was used to running on any fuel you could pretty much get eight headlights or is it four I don't know what I do know is that like a lot of this there's bits from rolls royces there's bits from other British cars John Dobb was a massive patriotic British guy he loved the fact that there was nothing more British than driving around in a car with an engine from a Battle of Britain plane in it and that's what makes it so ridiculous and amazing and it's still classed as a Rolls-Royce these headlights are actually from their Lucas units I think yeah they're the same as an Allegro or a Hillman hunter or a Mach 1 Capri so it's actually got Mark 1 Capri headlights and tail lights I think Rolls-Royce bumpers obviously the rolls Grill is no more let's not mention that again and this match you know what it reminds me of I tell you what this the proportions and everything it reminds me of something out of out of a Hanna-Barbera cartoon that's been painted the color of a prosthetic limb in the 70s but what's cool I know we joke this is on the cover of numerous magazines if we're allowed to use any archive shots I'll show you some from where John did many many uh TV appearances throughout the Europe with the car uh it was on the cover of Street Machine magazine in 81 with the rolls Grill on it which is a really iconic thing so this car is absolutely Infamous and the reason why I'm allowed to do this video is because this car if you're watching this when I release this video on The Late break show it's for sale right now for the first time in history it's for sale it's leaving the family and you can buy it via auction uh through current classic and yes I do want it yes if you thought the outside was 70s the beast's innards are like Battle Star Galactica meets two miles per gallon because that's what you're faced with you've got these amazing laid-back 70 seats brown and beige two-tone and all the glass fiber the one-off glass fiber that was done on the outside all this stuff is is here and there's such a colossal center console because the last Bank of cylinders under the engine bay sort of protrude in across into here so this has all been molded around that massive engine mated to the th400 auto box so it is a two-seater even but it's got a massive amount of space at the back there John never got around to fitting power steering so it's it's just about arm power on this lovely 70s wood Rim I think it might be a grand steering wheel which I love I'm noticing again that stalk is very strangely familiar to a lot of British car people that's from a Hillman Avenger I know it is or something like that Aero gauges that's from a Ford I'm sure that's from a Ford but you know it's a comfortable car right and there's loads of space in it because John actually used it as a grand tourer when he moved to Malaga in Spain he used to drive the car back to the UK for mots he used to drive it regularly at near V-Max or as close to Vmax as he could get on the German autobahns he said he never went beyond 185 because it started to feel a bit dicey and I'm like yeah of course because remember back the entire technology was nothing like what it is now nothing like it so the fact that this even would do over 150 and not feel weird is a miracle the engine weighs just over a ton on its own just to put that in perspective I'll show a shot of it now uh park next to a Suzuki chimney the whole Suzuki chimney is the same way as the engine in this let's reveal the Beast the heart of the Beast gosh that's so nice and so nice and warm so this is this is what it's all about now I am not an aeronautical expert so please forgive me what I do know speaking to the Dodd family and and reading up about it is this is a mark 35 Merlin engine not a meteor engine so as I said before in its original guys it's had a meteor engine both rolls royces both v12s both 27 liters but the the Merlin was living in the sky with a Spitfire or a Lancaster the meteor was a ground dwelling machine for a tank and when the car got damaged and got re-bodied and rebuilt that's when John decided to Splash out actual serious cash back in the late 70s on putting a true Merlin engine in it albeit without the Supercharger so it lives on a bespoke chassis the V5 document refers to this car as a Rolls-Royce Coupe but what John did is managed to package everything that you need here you've got the steering box down there you've got that suspension from an Austin Westminster crucially also keeping the damn thing cold because this is supposed to have lived up there in the air where it didn't need any cooling or man-made cooling it just use the air this has a huge thick radiator there and a massive expansion tank which I first thought was a a brown Paddington Bear suitcase but it's actually an expansion tank and it uses a Holley four-barrel carb which is underneath this piece of copper here open the throat car with a homemade Inlet manifold and there look the engine disappears slightly underneath the windscreen line how much power has it got well if this was supercharged like the original Merlin it would have been about 1500 horsepower John Dodd always said in interviews it's around about a thousand horsepower so what was the purpose behind it to get a car that could really go fast oh yes Crews at 200 miles an hour and uh beat anything else and make it all British apparently it was geared for about 300 miles an hour but the gearing has since been changed because nobody needs to go 300 and there's nobody needs to do 200 in the Beast John Dodd is he really liked to use it he loved the theater the Ridiculousness the boundary pushing of this car to the point where when he was in Germany once he did actually um overtake a baron a German Baron driving a Porsche and um ended up phoning Rolls-Royce to ask them about this new high-powered Coupe that he'd seen on the on the road there are so many stories attached to the Beast and I honestly can't I can't explain all of them as well as the family would be able to but um what you do need to know is this thing has twin magnetos because obviously it's an aero engine um 760 pounds feet at pretty much idle this is a low revving engine about two and a half thousand RPM maximum it idles at 150 RPM bear in mind an average family car probably idles at about 700 RPM something like that and that's the thing it's not built to go in a car and that was always John's Genius of getting his step up system to work with an auto gearbox with such a low revving engine so that it could actually talk to the gearbox and the gearbox knew what to do where to put the power and for it to be drivable in some way a fuel tank 26 gallon fuel tank this has in it it used to be a dry sump when it was an airplane engine it's now a wet sump for packaging purposes um 10 gallons of oil so when you come to do an oil change on the Beast you you're going to be spending some coin on just the product just the oil 10 gallons but on the flip side it doesn't need Super leaded fuel like I said before it was it all run John used to run it in the 70s on two star if you're a young viewer you'll have no idea what two star three star four star or five star petrol is but it's basically grades of fuel five star being the equivalent of super unleaded yeah what a thing though I have to say this is the first time I've ever seen the Beast I remember watching it on Top Gear uh 25 years ago and Karen classic just did a video with Steve Berry the original presenter who Revisited the car after 25 years it was brilliant so I remember seeing it in mags I remember seeing it I think on top trumps cards because of course no car can out trump it in terms of cubic capacity 27 liters and in fact John Dodd used to mot even when he didn't need to anymore because it's it's tax exempt mot exempt and it's Euless compliant so if the new owner who ends up buying this wants to drive it around London it is you less compliant I will put a screen grab up to prove that he used to just want to get the tax disk which would say Rolls-Royce and 27 000 CC I'm fortunate enough to have driven a lot of cars in my career and I have actually been out before in a roles meteor engine car a car called a Rover sd1 that I did for fifth gear on TV years ago but that car was inspired by this car in fact I think this is the first Aero engine car ever built but you want me to stop talking now you want to know what it sounds like and what it drives like out on the street so I'm going to shut up let's do that okay in order to get the Beast flight worthy and it and I say flight worthy because there's lots of rocker switches and actually none of them are labeled there's a strict procedure to to firing up the Beast I've got Steve just off camera who's the custodian of the Beast who's leaving a Hawkeye on me so I turn the ignition on one click and there's a light down there which tells me it's okay then I go to this Banker switches and it's the fourth one in which is the check for the electric fan because you have to do checks then I that one and that one that one those two there are the electric fuel pumps I would check them so I just run one of them and I can see there's pressure second one definitely pressure there's a tiny gauge down by my left foot it's buried so they're okay and then you prime it with that one yes you prime it with that one for five seconds [Music] no it's not that one it's that one yeah that one's a problem so it's I'm glad I don't I'm glad I'm guys that's right so that's the priming one you prime that for five seconds and then you leave it on and then hit the and then leave it on and then I switch the uh the other fuel pump on the other full pump on itos and then I fire the button okay okay wow all right time to drive the Beast my word I don't want to stall it so I'm actually left foot breaking it just to when it's cold we just want to make sure it's happening right let's go I've been fortunate enough in my career to drive a lot of interesting cars a lot I'm not sure I've ever driven anything like Beast no no seat belt yeah coming from here nice oh wow around to it but actually it feels similar to my Dodge Charger with our power assistance roundabout number one face wow concentrated okay headlights seven already liters 27 meters yes what a thing I mean you're aware of the huge weight such a lot of money foreign it's warming up now smells so weird TX 400 heavily modified yeah but General Motors gearbox is going into now by Curry here so there's a lot of police activities warm it up now I'm getting used to it nice I believe oh oh my word what a sensory overload the Beast wow that was that was quite something that really was quite something quite daunting and I did feel like I I I almost felt the sort of spirit of of John Dodd watching over me because John used to drive this car hard if you look at any old archive footage he would give it some and he would notoriously talk about taking it on the autobahns in Germany and trying to kind of V-Max it but of course back then the tires weren't that great there weren't many 200 mile an hour tires it's so loud but you can't actually tell it's a V12 until you kind of start carrying a bit of speed it's it's all the the cacophony of the gearbox and the whole transmission system but actually the ride is really good no seat belts these amazing kind of boat Rogers chairs you just lay back in them and the steering is nowhere near as heavy as I was expecting um I'm used to my Dodge Charger which has no power steering it's quite similar once you're above kind of 20 miles an hour it all just feels alright oh wow what an experience though it feels properly special I'm tingling and it's it's you you can imagine if I could give you the smell through this through the screen you know how this car would smell I feel like someone's just tipped a can of petrol over my face but it's it's it's phenomenal what a phenomenal thing Goodness Me I never thought I'd actually see the beast in the metal uh let alone drive it and it feels extremely special actually quite emotional but you know I felt overwhelming sense of responsibility this is a true one-off car if you're watching this at a time when we've just released this video the car auction will still be live you'll you could own this you could be the first person outside of the Dodd family to ever own it it's a true heirloom and a true eccentric extension of John Dodd's personality it's a completely pointless car but also it's an incredible feat of engineering and it's notorious and Infamous in a purist sense so many magazine covers so many BBC interviews so many press cuttings it's just it's a very very special slice of our petrol head Kingdom I hope you've enjoyed this episode of the late break show as much as I have if you haven't already subscribed then what are you thinking you need to subscribe if you want to become a patreon have a look in the description below and you can support us that way or maybe you want to have a look at our merch shop again I'll put a link in the link in the description in fact I will put a link in the description for the for the auction of this yeah I'll do that thanks for watching

Channel: The Late Brake Show

Views: 3,675,668

Keywords: jonny smith car reviews, carpervert, the beast, the late brake show, rolls royce, rolls royce merlin v12, most powerful car, worlds biggest engine, the beast start up, rolls royce merlin start up, john dodds rolls royce, john dodd the beast, worlds fastest car, 27 litre car, the beast car, 1970s custom cars, aero engined car, spitfire engine, rolls royce merlin v12 top speed, loudest car in the world, john dodd, street legal dragster, merlin engine, v12 engine sound

Id: QFdhCZ517gU

Length: 29min 35sec (1775 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 09 2023