Vintage Mini gets 3,500-horsepower engine swap for Goodwood

Mini diesel by Cummins – Click above to enlarge

Cummins: the largest independent diesel engine manufacturer. The QSK78: the largest engine they make. Mini: one of the smallest cars on the road. Oh dear, this could get messy.

The unfathomably large QSK78 was recently unveiled with 78 liters of displacement, eighteen cylinders (that's 4.3 liters per cylinder!), a dozen turbochargers, 3,500 horsepower and over 10,000 lb-ft of torque. It's used to power those enormous dump trucks seen schlepping heavy loads (try 360 metric tons on for size) around quarries and mines. And now it's been installed in a vintage Austin Mini.

The Frankenstein-ain't-got-nothin'-on-me monstrosity was, according to Cummins, commissioned by a customer, but we can hardly image it being actually drivable, let alone certified for street use anywhere this side of the Persian Gulf. It'll be unveiled this week at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, where it's sure to be the most powerful – not to mention the strangest – vehicle on display. Press release after the jump.

[Source: Cummins]

Show full PR text

3,500 BHP MINI – FROM CUMMINS! GOODWOOD'S ODDEST EXHIBIT UNVEILED

Visitors to this week's Goodwood Festival of Speed will have some amazing machinery on which to feast their eyes but none more unusual than the exhibit which greets them on the stand of Cummins, the world's largest independent maker of diesel engines.

The Cummins centrepiece emerged after a previous show when the company showed off its largest engine (and the largest diesel engine made in the UK). The QSK78 engine weighs in at over 11 tonnes and some wag asked if it could be fitted to his Mini.

Steve Nendick, Cummins' Communications Director - Europe, Middle East, Africa and CIS, takes up the story: "We never like to let a challenge go by unanswered so we got to thinking maybe we could fit the QSK78 into an original Austin Mini. It proved to be a bit tricky to fit under the bonnet but our engineers came up with a more creative solution. "We're certain that the Goodwood crowd will have difficulty believing what they are seeing", he said.

The QSK78, which is used to power mining industry dump trucks capable of carrying 360 tonnes, is a V18 monster with a capacity of 78 litres and uses no less than 12 turbochargers to develop 3,500 bhp and getting on for 14,000 Nm of torque (the original Mini made do with just 80!).