Cool Car Project (?)

[Darrell]

I caught an episode of Stacey David's Gears program on Speed channel the other day, he was showing the Banshee Miata project car. Looked too cool! They dropped a V8 engine in a first generation Mazda Miata, put the Banshee body kit on it, improved the running gear, etc, painted it blue. Slick looking car, and it ran like a raped ape. Here it is at their website:

http://staceydavid.com/projects/banshee

Lots of pics there, videos too.

[rightisright]

That's cool. It's the first Miata I have ever seen that made me say those two words. Yeah, I know they make great track cars... but they look so gh3y.

[Netpackrat]

Have to wonder how badly that messed up the weight distribution... AlaskaTRX is looking into putting a Rover V8 into an MGBGT... One of the big selling points of that swap, is that the weight difference between the aluminum V-8 and the original cast iron 4 is insignificant, so the handling remains outstanding, but with a lot more power.

[Darrell]

Poor man's Cobra.

[Jericho941]

Might be fun to do something like this... once I've got my actual car paid off.

[MiddleAgedKen]

I always thought the original Scarab was a heck of an idea. The Banshee is very much in that spirit.

[Highspeed]

I've seen a few V8 miata conversions on the autocross track. They handled just fine.

My guess is that anyone serious enough to cram a V-8 into one of those things has the brains and bucks to tune the suspension so it can compensate for a big hairy chested iron motor replacing that asthmatic Jap-crap 4 pot engine.
In Europe people keep the motor and supercharge it instead. Which makes for a cost to power ratio which the Space Shuttle main engines look cheap

An ex friend of mine had a heavily worked on Miata as a track day car. I'm sure it was good fun in his sphere of reference, but being a biker I found it very fucking boring. It accelerated like a Tortoise. UK car guys are mostly a bunch of dickheads really, they go to race circuits with their roll cages and 4 point harnesses and poodle around pretending they have done something dangerous. Fucking pussies. His guys were the 'elite' who go every year to the Nurburgring and pay the ex-Nazi's who own the track to pretend they are racing drivers. The cage drivers crash a lot there, but only the bikers get seriously hurt or die.

[TheIrishman]

I've seen a few V8 miata conversions on the autocross track. They handled just fine.

With the right springs and dampeners, yes they handle just as well as the I4 cars do. The real problem comes at the back of the car and those tiny wheel wells. Stock they only pushed from 100-119 lb/f of torque. Even the "Monster Miatas" with their flared fenders and larger tires could get twitchy when a stock 300 lb/f ford 5.0 was slipped in. 225 HP and 300 lb/f of torque isn't hard to achieve from the 4 banger with some work and a turbo or supercharger setup. It's about as big as you'd want to go if the track is the primary use. Anything above that will make for an amazingly fun, tire burning, street car(not that there's anything wrong with overpowered cars ).

For the price of an MX5 project car you could easily find a '85-91 L98 corvette. I've seen them going for around $3k in decent shape. The chassis will handle much more power as will the much larger tires that can be fit. Bore and stroke the motor to 383ci, add some good aftermarket heads and intake for an easy 400+HP. Swap in a mildly modified LT1 or LS crate motor and surprise a whole lot of people who think it still has the stock 245HP TPI under the hood.