RE: Seat To Bring Twin-Engined Rally Car To Goodwood

RE: Seat To Bring Twin-Engined Rally Car To Goodwood

Wednesday 29th June 2011

Seat To Bring Twin-Engined Rally Car To Goodwood

Ibiza 'Bimotor' to star on the rally stage at FoS



One of the highlights of the Goodwood Festival of Speed is undoubtedly the rally stage, where you get a chance to see rally cars and rally stars of the past and present fling themselves sideways around one of Lord March's garden copses.

This year will be no different, except that joining the usual gaggle of classic Escorts, WRC motors and Group B monsters will be, er, a 1980s Seat Ibiza.

No if that sounds about as interesting as watching a tractor plough a field, bear with us, because this is no ordinary Seat. Nope, this one has two engines.

It's called the Ibiza Bimotor rally car, and features two 1461cc 8-valve engines mounted transversely - one in the front and one in the back - to create a 125ps four-wheel-drive rally car. It even achieved a modicum of competitive success in the Spanish Gravel Rallies Championship.

 

Author
Discussion

Dr G

Original Poster:

15,159 posts

241 months

Tuesday 28th June 2011
quotequote all
125PS each, surely?

dave stew

1,502 posts

166 months

Tuesday 28th June 2011
quotequote all
Does anyone remember the MiniTwinny or indeed a twin engined Scirroco?

EDLT

15,421 posts

205 months

Tuesday 28th June 2011
quotequote all
62.5hp from a 1.4 8valve sounds about right if they were using VW engines at the time.

soxboy

6,063 posts

218 months

Tuesday 28th June 2011
quotequote all
EDLT said:
62.5hp from a 1.4 8valve sounds about right if they were using VW engines at the time.
They were Porsche engines weren't they? Or, should I say, Porsche-engineered engines.

craig2003

1,206 posts

205 months

Tuesday 28th June 2011
quotequote all
dave stew said:
Does anyone remember the MiniTwinny or indeed a twin engined Scirroco?
I remember that Sirocco

http://www.driversfound.com/scirocco/history/bimot...

jbforce10

509 posts

174 months

Tuesday 28th June 2011
quotequote all

chris333

1,034 posts

238 months

Tuesday 28th June 2011
quotequote all
soxboy said:
EDLT said:
62.5hp from a 1.4 8valve sounds about right if they were using VW engines at the time.
They were Porsche engines weren't they? Or, should I say, Porsche-engineered engines.
I remember this Ibiza as my mum had a 1.2 one. They were indeed badged as "Porsche Engineered" , but in fact couldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding, and the interior was the cheapest nastiest place you could imagine,

legalknievel

352 posts

196 months

Tuesday 28th June 2011
quotequote all
I got pretty excited in a sort of 10 year old sees a lambo kind of way when I saw the headline. Twin engines craziness etc... But is 250 ps a bit rubbish for such a crazy car? it must be pretty heavy too...

ChiChoAndy

73,668 posts

254 months

Wednesday 29th June 2011
quotequote all
I'm struggling to see the point.

DJ330

2 posts

153 months

Wednesday 29th June 2011
quotequote all
So thats where the chavs in 306's have been getting the bi motor idea from...

ivantate

166 posts

167 months

Wednesday 29th June 2011
quotequote all
There really is no point with such underwhelming power from the engines.

ikarl

3,730 posts

198 months

Wednesday 29th June 2011
quotequote all
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2011/05/twin-engi...

twin engined MR2 - on the face of it a rather easy conversion resulting in AWD and 260hp. Put a mk2 turbo together with a gt4 front though and you can a very unstressed AWD with 500hp!!!

Oddball RS

1,757 posts

217 months

Wednesday 29th June 2011
quotequote all
soxboy said:
EDLT said:
62.5hp from a 1.4 8valve sounds about right if they were using VW engines at the time.
They were Porsche engines weren't they? Or, should I say, Porsche-engineered engines.
Errr no.........

sim16v

2,176 posts

200 months

Wednesday 29th June 2011
quotequote all
VW have done quite a few twin engined cars, a couple specifically for the Pikes Peak Hillclimb.


The first Peaks golf had two 1.3 turbo transverse engines , followed by a twin 1.8L 16v car with the engines mounted longitudinally.

They even did a twin engined mk1 Jetta!

soxboy

6,063 posts

218 months

Wednesday 29th June 2011
quotequote all
Oddball RS said:
soxboy said:
EDLT said:
62.5hp from a 1.4 8valve sounds about right if they were using VW engines at the time.
They were Porsche engines weren't they? Or, should I say, Porsche-engineered engines.
Errr no.........
Then why were they badged 'System Porsche'?

muthaducka

381 posts

183 months

Wednesday 29th June 2011
quotequote all
Oddball RS said:
Errr no.........
Porsche were involved but only in the powertrain and gearbox development. I wasn't sure myself so wanted to find out for definite:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEAT_Ibiza

This version, while it established the now classic Ibiza shape, was advertised as having "Italian styling and German engines": having its bodywork been designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro's Italdesign[3][4] and was prepared for industrialisation by the German manufacturer Karmann. It was based on the SEAT Ronda, a small family car, with a gearbox and powertrain developed in collaboration with Porsche, thus named under licence System Porsche.

Still don't get it. Low powered engine x2? Wouldn't it have been better just to fit a larger capacity engine with the same output that would have been lighter.
Maybe the balance would be good with one in the back and one in the front.....mmmm - would be nice to know more about this car and the reason why two engines were dropped in...

Jacobyte

4,718 posts

241 months

Wednesday 29th June 2011
quotequote all

va1o

16,029 posts

206 months

Wednesday 29th June 2011
quotequote all
Shows how far we have progressed since the current Ibiza Cupra manages 180PS from a single 1.4 petrol!

B10

1,226 posts

266 months

Wednesday 29th June 2011
quotequote all
Read on a Spanish site that each engine had Webers and developed 125ps apiece. So 250ps altogether.

jimjim150

213 posts

183 months

Wednesday 29th June 2011
quotequote all
Found out for definite, then present link to Wikipedia - priceless.