Have you heard of the Connaught Type-D
Syracuse GT before? Probably not. The
project was led by Tim Bishop and Tony Martindale out of the UK and the car
came outfitted with a truly extraordinary 2.0-liter V10 engine. Not only that
but the engine was supercharged. To describe this engine, and the car, as
‘unique’ would be an understatement.
Drive Tribe notes that the compact engine
had the cylinder banks set at just 22.5 degrees and was mounted very far back
in the car’s tubular steel spaceframe chassis. It produced approximately 300 hp
and was paired with a five-speed manual transmission and a limited-slip differential
driving the rear wheels. As you can probably imagine, this V10 sounded unlike
any other and produced a howl more akin to a high-revving sports bike.
It’s not just the engine that made the
Connaught Type-D quite the thing. The car complemented the tubular steel
spaceframe chassis with carbon fiber body panels and was said to weight just
950 kg. What’s more, the small British company had the intention of
eventually selling the Type-D in hybrid guise and wanted to equip the V10 with
start-stop technology and the ability to deactivate one bank of cylinders for
city driving, effectively turning it into a 1.0-liter five-cylinder.
As is so often the case, however, the car
never made it to production, despite ambitious claims from the car manufacturer
that it was actually under budget when developing the car.
