The London Concours held at the the Honourable Artillery Company (HAC) is one of the highlights of my automotive calendar.
The line-up of cars at this event is always spectacular and the classes they are divided into are always interesting. This year was no exception and so to give the cars in the classes the screen time they deserve, I’ve decided to split my content from this year’s show into multiple parts.
My last post was covering the ‘Corvette – a Design Icon’ class which you can read about here: https://motorsportformentalhealth.com/2024/06/23/london-concours-2024-corvette-a-design-icon
Today’s class is ‘The Legendary V12’.
Smooth and powerful, the first V12 was built in 1904 for use in a racing boat but the configuration was soon adopted for the automotive world in both motorsport and luxury cars.
Mercedes-Benz like to offer a V12 in their top of the line S and SL models. Then their performance arm AMG take the quiet, refined engine and turn it into an absolute sledge hammer.
This 2009 R230 SL65 AMG Black Series makes 661bhp for its’ twin turbocharged 6.0 V12. These sound absolutely incredible!
Aston Martin have also used V12s in their sports cars such as the V12 Vantage:
They also have V12s insome of their big cruising GT cars like Vanquish S:
Lamborghini’s flagship cars have always been V12. From the Miura of the 1960s and 70s all the way up to the modern day Revuelto.
The Diablo was the flagship car of the 1990s. The SV (Super Veloce) was interesting slightly cheaper than the standard Diablo despite being the more performance oriented variant.
Ferrari’s flagship line up also contains a lot of V12s.
349 F50s were built between 1995 and 1997.
My favourite bit about the F50 is the view through the mesh grill at the back of the car, over the gearbox and pushrod suspension. Photographs never do that view justice.
The Testarossa and 512BB were odd inclusions into this class as they are powered by Flat 12s not V12s. It was nice to see them though.
Finally in this class we have John Dodd’s Rolls Royce Merlin engined ‘Beast’.
The Rolls Royce Merlin is the 27 litre V12 used in the Supermarine Spitfire and Avro Lancaster, WW2 era fighter and bomber respectively.
Paul Jameson built the chassis in the early 1970s to house the V12 but got stuck getting it to fit onto a gearbox.
This is where John Dodd took over. He was able to mate the engine to a General Motors Turbo 400 automatic gearbox.
Dodd orignally had a Rolls Royce grill on the car, which Rolls Royce weren’t too pleased about, and it led to a very high profile court case which Dodd lost and he had to remove the grill. As you can see the car has got the grill back now.
Dodd sadly passed away in 2022 at the age of 90. He apparently used the car right up to the end which I think is wonderful.
I personally find aero-engined cars really interesting. I’ve built a slot car of the Fiat S76 ‘Beast of Turin’ which you can read about here: https://motorsportformentalhealth.com/2024/02/18/george-turner-models-fiat-s76-the-beast-of-turin/
The thing that makes John Dodd’s Beast stand out is that it is a functional car. That can transport mulitple people in comfort and it has a large boot to put things in. Most aero-engined cars are racing cars, which whilst wonderful, aren’t a car you could use everyday to do everyday things.
That’s it for the V12s! Thanks for reading! There are still a few more classes of the London Concours for me to cover, so if you would like to stay up to date with all my blog posts please subscribe to the blog via email (from the box at the bottom of the page).
Follow me on the following social media platforms:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/motorsportformentalhealth/
Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/richard-francis-b45025137/
TikTok: @richardfrancismsfmh
Twitter: @richardmsfmh
Instagram: @motorsport4mentalhealth
Youtube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ-j8broFg4i2rWIBy6W82Q
1 Comment