This Twin-Engine Mini Pickup Makes Me Feel Things I Haven't Felt In A Long Time
Screenshot: Liam Doran
There is a fine line between wack and inspired. Liam Doran toes that line with incredible deftness with his most recent monster Mini Cooper pickup. This little guy features a pair of Suzuki Hayabusa GSX1300R engines, each pushing high-rev ponies to the tires. This flyweight wonder is built to go fast, do wheelies, and shred tires, and it manages to do all of those, often all at once. This truck was originally built for the British Autograss series, which is basically short-course rallycross with lightness and power being paramount. This car has both in spades, as Doran claims it puts down 420 horsepower and weighs just around 1,325 pounds.
MY CRAZY TWIN ENGINE CAR BUILD
Twin-engine Minis have been a thing for as long as there have been Minis, with the original crafted in 1962 to create an off-road all-wheel drive Moke. John Cooper built a “Twini Mini” for rally, but things went wrong and the project was abandoned. The difference between those twin-engine Minis and this one, however, is that this one isn’t all-wheel drive. This car of Doran’s features a pair of ‘Busa motors in the pickup bed, feeding a V-drive input shaft and supplying power only to the rear wheels. Because of the way the rules for this car’s class are written, this is apparently the best way to make lightweight power.
MY TWIN HAYABUSA MOTOR MINI PICK UP DRIFTS IN USA
With the exaggerated fender flares, long-travel suspension, preposterous lime green and purple aesthetic, and ability to drift on cue, this car looks like a high-end radio controlled machine, just flipping from drift to wheelie to opposite drift in the blink of an eye. This build feels like the kind of thing that Ken Block would have done, which is probably exacerbated by the Monster Energy and Hoonigan logos on the thing. Doran has really outdone himself with this car.
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