Pete Sparrow is clearly a gifted, but rather demented man.
His company – Sparrow Automotive – specialises in jamming BMW bike engines into Citroen 2CVs so that they go rather faster than good sense would probably dictate.
Sparrow says that any BMW flat twin R-series engine will fit into a 2CV with no body modifications needed, so to prove it built a prototype with the engine out of a BMW 1100S. With the 2CV’s tiny 680kg curb weight, the 1100S’s 71kW (compared to the original 2CV’s 6.7kW), the prototype will scamper to 100km/h from a standing start in under 9 seconds and has a top speed of more than 160km/h.
But words and numbers don’t really do it justice, so here is a video of Pete Sparrow thrashing the prototype around Mallory Park race circuit. Just think of the sense of shame the other drivers felt as he cleaned them up in a 2CV…
