VIDEO: Mountain-Motored Fiat S76 Reawakens in The Beast of Turin Trailer
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/113158655[/vimeo]Most of you are familiar with the long-serving muscle car and hot rod adage, “There’s no replacement for displacement,” correct? Well, 103 years ago, Fiat engineers took that advice to an extreme that hasn’t been surpassed since by building the S76 land speed record racecar. Its inline-four engine made an incredible-for-the-time 290 horsepower, but it had to be downright elephantine to do so: The engine displaced 28.5 liters. That’s more than four Chevrolet LS7s’ (and more than 20 current Fiat 500 engines’) worth of bore and stroke. Zounds.
Fast forward to today and a group of restorers headed by Duncan Pittaway have brought the S76 back to life (Technically, they combined the chassis and body of one of the two S76s built with the engine of the other one.). This trailer for a documentary called The Beast of Turin (which will be released in February) shows the S76 firing up for the first time in just over a century. And when we say “firing up,” we do mean firing up; this thing idling sounds – and looks – like Satan a couple hours after a Taco Bell bender. It’s glorious, and we cannot wait to see the whole movie.