Wednesday 29th June 2011

Seat To Bring Twin-Engined Rally Car To Goodwood

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

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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.

 

[Dr G]

125PS each, surely?

[dave stew]

Does anyone remember the MiniTwinny or indeed a twin engined Scirroco?

[EDLT]

62.5hp from a 1.4 8valve sounds about right if they were using VW engines at the time.

[soxboy]

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]

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]

Lancia Trevi Bimotore anyone?

http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR6ltfzUxM...

[chris333]

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]

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]

I'm struggling to see the point.

[DJ330]

So thats where the chavs in 306's have been getting the bi motor idea from...

[ivantate]

There really is no point with such underwhelming power from the engines.

[ikarl]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

Alfa did this years ago:

http://www.ddavid.com/formula1/alfabimotore.htm

[va1o]

Shows how far we have progressed since the current Ibiza Cupra manages 180PS from a single 1.4 petrol!

[B10]

Read on a Spanish site that each engine had Webers and developed 125ps apiece. So 250ps altogether.

[jimjim150]

Found out for definite, then present link to Wikipedia - priceless.