This Tank-Engine-Powered Ford Crown Vic Sounds Utterly Absurd (27-liter World War II tank engine)

Car and Driver ^ | 7-11-21 | Mack Hogan

[Revel]

That car does not even have steering.

[LastDayz]

Engine is set too far back. Should have moved it forward considerably and modded the front clip thereby retaining the dash and most of the firewall. Would have done a lot of things differently on this beast especially turbo location as well as exhaust.

[Moltke]

Driver placement is going to be tricky... looks like he’ll end up somewhere in the rear seats region.

[Paal Gulli]

All this prattle about horsepower when it’s really the torque that counts. The stock Meteor makes 1550 lb-ft of Q @1600 rpm. Jay Leno has a 1934 Rolls-Royce P2 he’s dropped a 27-liter Rolls-Royce Merlin engine into (the Meteor was developed from the Merlin) that turns a max Q of 1750 lb-ft. The car will run 80 mph in top gear ... at idle.

[Don W]

Just FYI, the Crown Vic is a full frame car. Bodywork has no part in the structural strength. That said, the torque from that engine is going to force some serious improvements to the frame’s rigidity...

[Rurudyne]

I’m talking about the chunk of frame that would have been under the windshield, which they cut away.

[Don W]

Here's a photo of a Crown Vic frame. You will notice that the frame comes out to the wheels immediately after the between-wheels (under the engine) crossmember, which appears to be intact in the video. If the between-wheels crossmember were removed, bolting the frame rails directly to the engine block would serve the purpose of the between-wheels crossmember, which is to reinforce the front frame crossmember.

This is called a *perimeter ladder* frame, for obvious reasons. Early 1960's design.

[Rurudyne]

I didn’t realize they were the last non-truck frame on body.

[Rurudyne]

Or at least nearly so.

[Openurmind]

I absolutely agree... We made a mistake when we trended from small bore long stroke engines to large bore short stroke engines. That chasing of RPMs was a mistake, we should have chased torque instead. It can always be geared up because of the lower RPM.

[PLMerite]

I remember seeing a video that teased “a 55 Chevy with a Mustang engine.”

One soon found out that it wasn’t an engine out of a Ford Mustang, but a P-51 Mustang Rolls Royce Merlin.