Notice anything strange about the wheels?
It's a Ford Transit body mated to a Jaguar XK220 chassis:
http://forums.finalgear.com/general-automotive/xj220-powered-transit-van-at-goodwood-this-year-14585/
The Brits have a weird and wonderful sense of humour!
Heres the background It was built by TWR in the early 90's as a rolling testbed. It was lighter than the 220 & would hit 60 quicker! Top speed at Millbrook was 170 mph. One lucky engineer (Patrick Walker) used to take it home at weekends for milage accumulation. The van was built to drive in city traffic and was a very important part of the XJ220 development as they had the test track at Millbrook to do the high speed work but nothing would test the car in city traffic,and Jaguar would not like to have bad press with a 220 at the side of the road, so the van was built as a test bed for every day driving in gridlock conditions. It is basically an XJ220 with a Transit Bodyshell stuck on top of it.
It has the full running grear from theXJ220.
Heres a quote from the owner We look after seven of the pre-production cars,’ says Don, proudly. ‘The first two were nothing like a 220 and had scissor doors. The third was the first one to look like a 220.’ And what’s this? It’s a Ford Transit. Don explains. ‘We went to TWR to buy the last engine and some spares. “Is there anything else?” we asked. “Only the secondhand engine in a van,” they said. I thought they meant an engine on a pallet that happened to be in the back of a van, but it’s a complete XJ220 under the Transit shell. ‘It was an XJ220 mule. They were going to scrap it when TWR was liquidated but I rescued it. It looks just like a twin-wheel Transit apart from the XJ220 wheels, and it’s road registered.’ The Transit XJ220 once did 179mph around the Millbrook test track’s bowl, and it made an appearance at last year’s Festival of Speed in the livery of Goodwood’s usual Transit fleet.
I wonder if I can order that from Jag... or even a TransitConnect or whatever the hell it's called from Ford, +Ford GT.
JtspellS wrote: Looking at the rear tire i almost thought it was a dulie. Awesome.
Ed Zachary my thoughts...on both statements
mndsm wrote: I wonder if I can order that from Jag...
They could probably cobble one up. Didn't they have a few XJ220s laying around after they couldn't sell them?
mad_machine wrote: hmm... maybe Ford GT under an econoline?
I just so happen to have an econoline, high-top conversion, even. Gimme a GT, and I'll stick'em together.
modernbeat wrote: Don't you guys remember the Renault F1 van?
Espace F1
In 1995, Renault displayed a show car called the Espace F1 (created by Matra) to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of the Espace and Renault's involvement in Formula One racing. Though it resembled an Espace with substantial bodywork changes, the vehicle in fact had more in common with a Formula One car. The vehicle used a lightweight carbon fibre F1 -style chassis in combination a carbon-fibre reinforce Espace J63-series body (as opposed to fibreglass on the standard model. Powering the Espace F1 was an 800hp (upgraded from its original rating of 700hp), 3.5-litre, 40-valve Renault RS5 V10 engine as used in the 1993 Williams-Renault FW15C. As with an F1 car, the V10 engine is mid-engined (as opposed to the conventional front-engined layout) and the power was transmitted to the rear wheels via a 6-speed semi-automatic gearbox, also used in the FW15C. The engine and transmission allowed the Espace F1 to accelerate from 0–100 km/h (0–62 mph) in 2.8 seconds, 0–200 km/h (0–124 mph) in 6.9 seconds and carry on accelerating to a top speed of 312 km/h (194 mph). With the use of carbon-ceramic brakes, the Espace F1's deceleration was no less impressive that its acceleration - it could accelerate from 0–270 km/h (0–168 mph) and brake to a complete halt in under 600 metres (1,969 ft).
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