Question of the Week: What’s the top Car Powered By a Non-Automotive Engine?—WINNER’S UPDATE

WINNER’S ANNOUNCEMENT:

We’re back to announce the winner for our Question of the Week, where our victor will accept a $25 credit for a hat or T-shirt from the BaT Gear Store and the acclaim of their peers.

This week, our question was: What’s the best car powered by a non-automotive engine?

Thanks to everyone who participated! We broke out our exhaustive @AnonUserasSRy:

The Beast certainly caused quite the commotion back in its day. The photo at the top shows the late John Dodd crouching next to its second iteration. Dodd himself, besides having hair like a mad scientist, was also the grand provocateur of Rolls-Royce (peep his RR-branded pullover!), who were displeased over his unlicensed use of the Spirit of Ecstasy and RR grille on his custom shooting-brake body.

As for The Beast itself, the story goes back to 1966 and equally mad scientist Paul Jameson, who originally kicked off the build. A rolling chassis, with a Rolls-Royce Merlin V12 engine at the core, was in its final stages when Jameson passed the torch to Dodd. In the end, Dodd completed a car that was capable of 200 miles per hour.

Congratulations, jglowe77! Be sure to check your email to claim the prize. 

Now, let’s take a look at some other popular nominations from this week’s discussion thread:

The Tucker’s mill was a modified O-335 flat-six, and BaT member @SingleClutch‘s comment for it received plenty of love this week.

 As we mentioned, the STP-Paxton turbocar, driven by Parnelli Jones during the 1967 Indy 500, was another popular nomination. It even won our Favorite Indy 500 Car QotW in May 2025!

Chrysler was so serious about the future of the gas turbine-powered car that it enlisted 203 people to drive one around for three months over the course of two years. 

Image: Hot Rod

@HiRich writes:

In the mid-1950s, Irishman Jim Meikle took a Cooper Formula III car, originally powered by a 500cc Norton Manx engine and, for some reason, shoehorned in a SNECMA pulse-jet motor, similar to that from a V1 Doodlebug. As you do.

Remarkably, he may not have been the first to do something like this, as I recall a Swiss chap trying to go hillclimbing with something similar. Given the nature of European “bergrennen” courses at the time, it was not entirely recommended.

Of note in the Jim Meikle story linked, “audible from 10 miles away”!

Interestingly, the Cooper was purchased by one Prof. Gordon Murray for his very interesting collection. GM, of course, produced perhaps the finest road car using a motorcycle engine, the LCC Rocket. I need to ask him if he has restored the pulse-jet yet.

You can’t forget that one time Goggles Paisano was disqualified for finishing the Indianrockilis 500 under foot power!

And we’ll wrap up this week’s discussion with a comment from @shervinator:

The jet-powered 2000 Volkswagen New Beetle by Ron Patrick.

It may not be the coolest by most people’s standards, but it’s the one I remember making all the rounds on the internet in the mid-2000s. For those of you who were around, you probably saw it in one of those endless “Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd:” chain emails from that friend who would send you things daily (this was before we had Instagram).

It looked like a completely stock silver New Beetle save for the massive jet engine sticking out of its rear end like a rhinoceros giving birth. It was powered by a General Electric T58 turboshaft, made a downright scary 1350 horsepower, and could wind up to 23,000 RPM. And somehow, it was street-legal. What?

In 2020, the owner and builder put it up for sale on Craigslist for $550,000. Whether he got that amount is a different matter, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Not too many people are eccentric enough to build such a crazy answer to a question nobody was high enough to ask, let alone pay half a million for it 15 years later.

Looks like his website about it is still live, and is still appropriately stuck in 2006: https://www.ronpatrickstuff.com/

If I had money to burn, I don’t think I would go out and build a jet-powered New Beetle. But you’ve gotta respect the commitment. After all, we’re still talking about it 20 years later.

That’s it for this week’s Question of the Week! Thanks to everyone who participated, and congratulations once again to our winner, jglowe77. We’ll be back with a new question soon.

ORIGINAL POST:

Welcome to the BaT Question of the Week! For those unfamiliar, here are the rules: we ask an automotive-themed question, and the author of our favorite answer from the comments is awarded a $25 credit to the BaT Gear Store, which includes our latest long-sleeve shirt release!

This week’s question is: What’s the best car powered by a non-automotive engine?

We recently stumbled across this aero-powered land speed car from the early 1920s named “Babs” by its maker, John Parry-Thomas. At the heart of the beast was a WWI-era surplus 27-liter Liberty V12 aircraft mill that propelled this behemoth to a 171.02-mph speed record!

Those in pursuit of power, ingenuity, or sheer creativity aren’t to be trifled with standard car engine choices, and “Babs” was one such example. Since the earliest days of hot rodding, car people have been cross-pollinating their vehicles with engines from all sorts of mechanical conveyances: aircraft, boats, motorcycles, tanks, and tractors, just to name a few. Heck, we’ve got one crazy option on our site right now in the “Krispy Kritter” Mustang. We’ve even seen a few officially-sanctioned oddball creations from racing teams and in auto show exhibitions. We’ll keep any other examples to ourselves, and pass it over to you:

What’s the best car powered by a non-automotive engine?

Tell us all about it in the comments, and give a thumbs-up to any nominations that grab your attention. We’ll announce the winner on Monday.