MID-ENGINED FIESTA?

Q I am about to start building a Mk2 Fiesta and the plan is to have it mid-engined and rearwheel-drive – can you recommend any other decent turbocharged engines to use?. John Keene Email

A Basically you can use any engine you want, you just need to mount it in front of a suitable transaxle, so take your pick of the current turbocharged line-up. Chris Todd has very successfully mid-mounted a Subaru Impreza flat-four turbo motor in his Mk1 Fiesta using a Porsche transaxle and custom suspension.

This isn’t a job for the faint-hearted and involves cutting out the whole of the rear floorpan and creating not only a suitable chassis to mount the engine and transaxle off, but an independent rear suspension set-up, too. So unless you’ve done a fair amount of fabrication in the past, we’d go and talk to a few fabricators and race-car specialists before you start cutting anything out.

“THIS JOB INVOLVES CUTTING OUT THE WHOLE OF THE REAR FLOORPAN....”