A unique custom car from the 1970s will cross the auction block in a few days. Dubbed The Beast, it is a Shooting Brake packing a humongous 27-liter engine borrowed from a fighter jet dating back to the WWII era. There is no price estimate.
The Beast was built in Great Britain and made it into the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s most powerful street-legal vehicle at the time. The engineer had claimed it could reach 295 km/h (183 mph), but the number was never stated in any documents.
Pop open the overlong hood, and you will be greeted by a V12 rocking 27 liters (that’s 1,648 cubic inches) of displacement volume. Called the Rolls-Royce Merlin, the engine used to power Hawker Hurricane and Superman Spitfire fighters in the World War II. Its actual output in the car remains unknown but is smaller than the original due to a missing forced induction system.
Originally, The Beast had been envisioned with a different body style and a Meteor V12 tank engine under the hood pumping out 750 PS (740 hp / 552 kW). However, after catching fire and changing its owner, the car underwent a rebuild.
Using the Rolls-Royce engine prompted the author of the project to adorn the vehicle with a corresponding OEM radiator grille. The luxury carmaker objected and ultimately took the matter to court, forcing the owner to replace the grille.
Even without its ginormous power plant, the car is remarkable in a number of ways. For one, it is a three-seater shooting brake with inimitable exterior proportions, a rare sand-colored paintjob and as many as eight headlamps. Most impressively, it remains road-legal in Great Britain to this day.
