The British Connection

In the mid 80s three of the proven concepts from Shelby's Skunkworks were dispatched to Lotus Cars in England for polishing to production car standards

Ever since hearing of Chrysler test cars with Lotus-developed parts being tested in England I thought to myself 'What if somethings still here?' The thought of tracking down dusty Mopar parts at the back of a warehouse was enticing, but without any contacts at Lotus it was unlikely.  I wasn't the only one to think this either, and a few months back it happenned to crop in conversation with Gareth Brewer.

Through Graham Hathaway, of Graham Hathaway Racing, Gareth managed to talk to John Miles who worked for Lotus back when they did the work for Chrysler.  He filled in a lot of the background information about the work that took place, and just how far it got.  Between that and information from the Shelby Times and the articles we've got here already, the full story goes something like this ...

As well as producing their own cars Lotus also do development work for other car makers, including Ford and GM, and it was hoped that with a more potent platform in the 1980s Dodge could take on some of the more exotic regular-production-based cars from Europe.  To get the 'K' platform to this level Shelby had come up with working prototypes featuring 16 valve heads made by Hans Herman and an all-wheel-drive system derived from the chrysler parts bin and initially using a front to rear torque splitter made by another racing development legend, Pete Weismann.

Lotus were handed three project briefs -

A-522, a 2.2 litre 16 valve turbo'd, intercooled, engine

A-516, a 2.5 litre normally aspirated 16 valve engine

A-544, an all-wheel-drive system

As it turned out the first project, A-522, was to be the longest lived.  It was also the only one to see production!  Lotus was given regular production 2.2 litre blocks to use, rather than the strengthened 'Mopar Performance' block, along with the Hans Herman head design as a starting point - this was known to be a favourite with Carroll Shelby, which is probably why it was supplied to Lotus.  In California this starting point had been tested at over 300 horsepower, but the manufacturing cost of the prototype head was far in excess of what could be put into a production car.

While that power was easy to get on an engine dyno, Chrysler executives were wary of putting that amount of power into a front-wheel drive platform, so in their eyes such an engine would have needed the all-wheel-drive system with it to be sold to the public.  Within Lotus this engine was referred to as the "Turbo II", probably on the assumption that at the time the project began it would be the successor to the 8 valve Turbo I engine.  When it came to fruition this engine was due to be fitted in the Shelby CSX in 1989, the engine plant in Saltillo, Mexico, had the tooling in place all ready to assemble 16v engines before it was cancelled.

Fortunately for FWD Mopar fans this wasn't the end of the story.  In 1991 the Dodge Spirit R/T recieved the A-522 engine, officially named the Turbo III, and the Daytona R/T got it too the following year.

The 2.5 litre 16v engine was originally envisioned as a replacement for the Turbo I in Dodge's low-end sporty cars.  Before development was cancelled in 1986 Lotus had it making 150hp when revving cleanly up to 7,500 rpm!  Most of the development engines were shipped back to the US and fitted to Dodge Shadow test mule cars, before eventually going in the crusher.  Only one example still exists and is on display at the Lotus factory in Norfolk, next to a Turbo III engine.  In production cars its place was taken by the non-intercooled 2.5 turbo and the normally aspirated 3 litre V6.

When it came to the All-wheel drive system Lotus had an ace up their sleeve in the form of John Miles.  John was the man behind the Audi Quattro's AWD development, and had been headhunted by Ford to work on their Group B rally car, the RS200, before working in Chassis Development at Lotus.  Project A-544 still used the Eagle / DeDion axle setup out back and after fine tuning and the use of a Quafe Engineering front/rear torque splitter it could handle as well on paved surfaces as the Quattro did by late 1987, when the project was cancelled due to Chrysler budget cutting.

After the program was cancelled most of the remaining setups were shipped back to the US, some being used for testing and one being fitted to the Decepzione Daytona, a Lamborghini V8 powered monster.  Six setups, bolted to Dodge Daytonas, were left with Lotus and it was the thought of what happenned to them that got myself and Gary thinking in the first place!

Top of the list of people we needed to talk to were Chrysler Europe, since anything still with Lotus was still officially the property of Chrysler.  Graham Watts at White House Dodge helped us get in contact with the relevant people, who stated that because anything involved was before the Daimler-Chrysler merger they would be happy to write it off.  Next up was Lotus and after a few phone calls Paul Harvey, the current head of Chassis Development*, went to great efforts to try and find out what happenned to the prototypes.  Unfortunately his search was in vain since, following a major clearout in 2001, all the remaining parts and paperwork had been disposed of - their usual policy is to crush any parts 5 to 10 years after development finishes, so the projects were already past their best before date when they went!

Although we were unable to find any juicy parts, the hunt for the Daytona 4 had to be tried; its turned over a few more rocks in the history of FWD Mopars and been an interesting insight into the way that performance development is done.

Our thanks go out to John Miles, Graham Hathaway Engineering, Chrysler UK , White House Dodge and Lotus Engineering for their help and patience!

* Interestingly Paul Harvey worked with John Miles, and saw the AWD system when he first started at Lotus as an intern

Linked Articles: 1 2 3  

Wikipedia: Daytona | Shelby | Lotus