Ken's Techno Tidbits

While our EuroVan continues to provide for a local mechanic’s retirement fund, I found this article on “Tuners” included a much faster version of what we’re (hopefully) driving the Grand Canyon during spring break.

The section on this vehicle from the article I linked to above says it all…

Winning first prize in the “You’ve got to be kidding me!” category was TH Auto­mobile’s TH2 RS. What’s wacky about it? Well, what started life as a pedestrian Volkswagen T5 van has been made into The World’s Fastest Brick.

First, TH Automobile swapped the engine from the front to the rear. But instead of a VW unit, TH dropped in a Porsche twin-turbo flat-6 breathed on by 9ff to produce 800 bhp. The rear axle and 6-speed manual transmission come straight from Porsche, as do the brakes.

The interior was also completely remodeled, the driver’s position switched to a central location, along with four carbon-fiber racing buckets for passengers. To handle the TH2 RS’s aero-defying speed of 193.1 mph (breaking the previous van record of 169.6 mph, set by a Claer-tuned T4 VW van), H&R provided an air suspension system that adjusts the ride height among three different levels depending on speed. TH claims the van can hit 62 mph in just 4.5 sec. A customer version would cost somewhere north of $225,000.

At almost 200MPH, that would get us to the South Rim in about, let’s see, 4 hours. Though we’d have to remove all of the camping accessories, move the engine from the front to the back, pay $225K, etc., etc., etc. But the look on driver’s faces as we sucked their doors off might make it all worth while.