What Happens When You Quintuple The Power Of A 2CV And Take It Racing?
Screenshot: HillClimbMonsters via YouTube
I love a good people’s car. Anything that’s been ruthlessly engineered to be cheap, rugged and simple to get people moving gets me stoked. These include things like the Ford Model T, the Volkswagen Beetle, the Land Rover Series 1 and most especially the Citroen 2CV.
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The 2CV is just so weird compared to all the other cars I mentioned with its ridiculously soft ride courtesy of its spring box suspension, 29 horsepower flat-twin engine, and cute snail-like shape that you can’t not love. Even its famous design brief to “carry four farmers, 100 lbs of goods including eggs across a freshly plowed field without breaking the eggs” is rad, but what happens when you throw out all of that and turn it into a race car?
Citroen 2CV with Supercharged BMW GS1200 Swap || 154Hp/660Kg Classic – Retro Rides 2018
Enter this utterly bananas 2CV hillclimb car. In addition to being slammed to the ground and fitted with tires that are slightly more than palm-width, some mad scientist has thrown out the wheezy French boxer and put in a 1,200-cc engine from a BMW R1200 GS and then strapped a supercharger to it. Yeah, this car now outputs over 150hp – approximately five times that of the stock car.
Even with these racing upgrades, it doesn’t exactly offer nosebleed-inducing performance, but holy hell, does it look rad and like it’s a whole lot of fun to drive up that hill with its column-mounted shifter and roomy cockpit. I would commit large-scale crimes, not even just victimless ones, to drive this thing, but alas, like you, I will have to content myself with watching this video repeatedly.
