2000 V8 saloon

[PaulAA]

Afternoon, chaps

During this morning's constitutional, I happened upon a piece about the later years of Coventry Climax and their acquisition by Jaguar.  What caught my eye was a reference to a prototype CFA 2.5 litre V8 being installed in Leonard Pelham Lee's personal Triumph 2000 Estate.

I've come across a Stag-engined big saloon and the FF one-off, but I've not been able to find out much about this one.  Anybody able to shed a bit of light on it?

Paul

[Rod1883]

I'm sure you will have found this, but just in case not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coventry_Climax

The relevant section reads:

CFA and CFF

After the designing was finished on the 5.3 L V12 and the Jaguar XJ, Jaguar wanted a modern engine for a smaller version of XJ. Although Jaguar had gained access to the 2.5 Litre iron block Daimler V8 with the take over of Daimler in 1960, it was a pushrod engine designed in the 1950s, and was not particularly small or light as it was based on, and had many common components with, the 4.5 Litre version.

In response, Coventry Climax designed an aluminium crossflow chain-driven SOHC cylinder head somewhat similar to the 5.3L V12 head, on FWMV Mk.4 block with a stroked crank and wet sump. Tecalemit-Jackson fuel injection was used for the development on this 2,496 cc CFA V8, and the engine was installed on Leonard Pelham Lee's personal Triumph 2000 Estate.

The testing was promising, and a 1,812 cc CFF version was prototyped, however, this 1.8 - 2.5 Litre baby XJ project was killed along with the V8 engines when British Motor Holdings merged with Leyland Motor Corporation in 1968 for the strategy to eliminate internal competition against what came out to be the Rover SD1.

Of course and as I'm sure you know, the first Stag V8's were also 2.5 litres.

[PaulAA]

Thanks, Rod.  Yes, I found that.

Everywhere the car is mentioned, the same sentence appears, with the same grammatical error ("... the engine was installed on Leonard Pelham Lee's...") suggesting that it has all been copied from one source.  I've found neither pictures nor anything to indicate whether the car still exists.

Whilst searching, I came across the website www.aronline.co.uk, which turned out to be a mine of information on BMC/BL.  The page it opened on had an essay on the sad history of the Rover P8, which looked as if it could have been a stunning car... but wasn't.

Cheers

Paul

[JohnD]

Leonard Pelham Lee.     OK, I looked him up, Mr.Coventry Climax the Second (after his father).      And he ran a T2000?     I'm impressed, I would have expected a Roller or a Bentley for Motor Industry royalty.

JOhn

Edited December 30, 2018 by JohnD

[Nick Jones]

That car would be one hell of a barn find, though engine parts might be troublesome to find.......

Probably long gone though.

[Sprint95m]

Not heard of this one before.

The owner of Canley Classics has a collection of T2000 prototypes/ development cars.
There were some interesting ideas including  Stag V8 and Dolomite Sprint engined cars,
but I think both of these were dismissed because of cost.

There were quite a few Stag estates made by Del Lines,
Alan Chatterton has one of these which recently completed the CT RBRR.

There were a few FF conversions done by Ferguson on 2.5PIs.
An estate version was fully and meticulously restored in Switzerland fairly recently.
These all retained the 2.5PI engine.

 

Ian.

[Nick Jones]

And there is an estate which has both the Ferguson FF and Stag V8 - as painstaking restored by Mike Weaver from a very hard-used starting point.

I guess the point was that the big saloon/Stag platform was pretty advanced for it's time and begging for more interesting power trains.

[toofast2race]

I have a picture of it back home in Oz in my pocket book to Coventry Climax engines - has the Duke of Edinburgh having a peek - about 1966

[Nick Jones]

Quite an interesting link that makes passing connection to the T2000

https://www.mig-welding.co.uk/forum/threads/coventry-climax-v8.58214/

Frustratingly the story is incomplete!

Nick

[toofast2race]

Found it - ultimate sleeper?

[toofast2race]

Race version gave 240 horses at 8700rpm and came on cam at 5000 - bit peaky for a 2000 estate!

Edited January 22, 2019 by toofast2race
Typo

[oldtuckunder]

what's really interesting about the 2.0 graphs is that if you back calculate torque from the graph that engine had an almost flat torque curve running circa 140-150 ftlbs all the way from 5.25K up to 9K ?

Alan

[Nick Jones]

Imagine it sounded rather special