In the collection of Jay Leno, a famous American millionaire and TV presenter, there is a Blastolene Special car with a tank engine. And I wondered how many cases in the world there were when a tank engine was installed on a car. So, before us are incredibly powerful and very heavy cars - and at the same time very beautiful.
In the opening illustration, the most beautiful of these masterpieces is the Blastolene Indy Special, created by Randy Grubb.
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Blastolene Indy Special 
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Blastolene Special 
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The car is also known as Jay Leno's Tank Car. It was manufactured by the tuning company Randy Grubb's Garage in 2002. Design developed from scratch; inspiration is drawn from the classic racing cars that set speed records in the 1930s at Bonneville. The AV-1790−5B engine is from the classic American M47 Patton tank, and this engine weighs 1134 kg. The total weight of the entire car is 3856 kg, despite the fact that the body is very light, made by hand from aluminum. Immediately after production, Grubb invited Jay Leno himself to look at the car - and without hesitation, he bought the car and renamed it. Leno claims that this particular car is the star of his collection (and he has something in his collection that most car fans have never even dreamed of).
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Blastolene Indy Special 
This is the same car that was on approach.
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Inspired by the idea of a tank-powered car, Randy Grubb of Randy Grubb's Garage built a second car in the series - this time not an abstract design, but based on the classic 1952 Watson Roadster race car. That is, not entirely based on it - Grubb simply copied the classic design of the Watson racing cars that shone on the tracks of the 1950s and 60s. The engine on the car is the same as on the first one - a twelve-cylinder monster AV-1790−5B from the M47 Patton tank with a power of 910 hp. The car has a 4-speed automatic transmission and weighs slightly less than its “big brother”, “only” 3810 kg.
It should be noted that Randy Grubb also made the insanely beautiful B702 with the design of a 1930 French Delahaye and a 12-cylinder truck engine; also Piss’d off Pete - a hot rod based on a 1960 Peterbilt with a powerful Detroit Diesel Series 71 bus diesel (it was also eventually bought by Jay Leno).
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Rodzilla 
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But Randy Grubb is not the only customizer who has thought of putting a tank diesel on a road car. In 2004, another auto tuning shop owner, Rodney Rucker, followed Randy’s example by building the Rodzilla hot rod, all with the same “native” AV-1790−5B engine from the M47 Patton. “Rodzilla” received a name merged from the surname of the creator of the car and Godzilla. The car is bodied by a 1928 Studebaker - unlike Grubb Rucker - a classic hot rod builder and uses actual vintage car bodies. The body, rusty and dented, was found in some landfill, Rodney says. It turned out a little rough, but powerful, you can’t say anything.
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Sneaky Pete 
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Three years later, Rodney Rucker returned to the tank engine theme and built his second tank hot rod, the Sneaky Pete, this time using the cab of a 1964 Peterbilt truck as the body. The engine is still the same, AV-1790−5B from a 1951 M47 Patton. The car weighs 4717 kg, while the hot rod accelerates to 201 km/h. On Sneaky Pete, Rucker crossed the country, driving from North Carolina to California and spending, by his own admission, $9,000 on fuel for the monster machine.
It is worth noting that Rodney Rucker took part in the construction of the Blastolene Special - they (Randy Grubb, Rodney Rucker and Michael Leeds) then formed a group of customizers under the general name of the Blastolene Brothers. Then Rodney left this company and started his own business.
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The Beast 
But the four cars created by Randy Grubb and Rodney Rucker are not the only cars in the world with tank engines. The first such precedent was created by English customizer Paul Jameson back in 1960. He used the British Rolls-Royce Meteor tank engine (and not the Merlin, as erroneously stated in a number of sources), which was installed on the Cromwell, Centurion and a number of other British tanks. Jameson mounted the engine on a frame and then sold the resulting chassis to Epsom engineer John Dodd, who created a fiberglass body for the car and named the resulting miracle The Beast Mk1. This was done with money from British Petroleum, which wanted to use the car for advertising purposes - and did.
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The car traveled to a number of car shows and exhibitions, where it was demonstrated at the stands of British Petroleum, but on the way from the Stockholm Motor Show it caught fire right on the road and completely burned out, despite all the efforts of Dodd, who was driving. Dodd subsequently restored the Beast (which by that time was listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the most powerful passenger car in the world) and now lives with his family and car in Spain.
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Interestingly, Rolls-Royce sued Dodd for using its logo on the car, won the case and forced him to replace the RR logo with his own initials JD. He also changed the body of the car to The Beast Mk2. Here it is with a new body, already post-fire.
And Paul Jameson subsequently built several more cars with a Rolls-Royce Merlin aircraft engine. It would also be interesting to talk about cars with helicopter and aircraft engines, but there have been about several hundred of them in history, and there is not enough patience.
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Panzerbike 
But the most outlandish vehicle with a tank engine was not a car at all, but... a motorcycle. It was built in 2007 by the Germans from the Harzer Bike Schmiede club under the leadership of Thilo Niebel and is now regularly demonstrated at various European bike shows. This 5.5-meter beast is powered by the Soviet B-55 tank engine, which was installed on the T-55 tanks (and quite new, manufactured in 1986, according to the creators of the motorcycle). The motorcycle weighs 4740 kg - this is a world record for motorcycles and is listed in the Guinness Book of Records. All parts of the motorcycle were obtained from scrap metal - mainly parts of decommissioned military equipment. At first, by the way, the bikers wanted to install a T-34 engine on the motorcycle, but then they decided not to waste time on trifles.
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KH Mustang 
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But that's not all. In addition to those mentioned above, the Ford GAA engine, installed on M4A3 Sherman tanks, turned out to be quite suitable for the car. At least that's what American Kevin Gaidrich, a customizer from Kolossal Kustoms, thought. He installed this engine in a 1970 Ford Mustang - the car just recently made its first exit from the garage. It looks, in general, quite banal, because compared to previous Ford GAAs it is a rather neat and small engine.
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Bonus track 
It is worth adding one more car to those listed. Not a passenger car, but not a truck either - something in between. This is a MAZ-541 airfield tractor. The vehicle weighed 28.23 tons and was equipped with a V-2 tank diesel engine, which was used on the KV-1 and KV-2 heavy tanks. The front wheels are from the YAZ-214, and the rear wheels are from the MAZ-525 mining dump truck. This vehicle was designed and developed for towing aircraft weighing up to 85 tons in 1956 - it was the first Soviet airfield tractor. Three cars were made, they were used for some time, and then, like many other achievements of the Soviet automobile industry, they were mercilessly cut into metal.
Beauty. Would you like to ride something like this?
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