News hardware What if Vilebrequin’s ugliest car in the world became faster than a Bugatti?
Published on 10/19/2022 at 12:40
Difficult to make more unanimous on the ugliest car in the world. Fiat’s Multipla is probably one of the worst visual creations in the automotive world. Except that if we transform it into a racing car with more than 1000 horsepower, what does it give?
The first start of the 1000tipla at the Mondial de l’Auto
Unveiled to the public during the Paris Motor Show on October 17, a privileged few had the opportunity to hear the monster roar. The 1000 horsepower Multipla could thus be started, developing all the same 129 decibels. This is an airplane taking off in full thrust. At that moment, the entire Hall of the Salon turned around.
The 1000tipla an incredible version of the worst car
The two Youtubers Pierre and Sylvain from
the Crankshaft chain
we had the wonderful idea of transform a Multipla into a real racing car. The genesis of the idea comes from an incredible publicity stunt from Renault in 1994 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Espace model. As a result, at the Paris Motor Show this year, the public was able to discover the Renault Espace F1. A family car with a real Formula 1 engine. In 2022, it is with the legendary Multipla that Vilebrequin intends to do as well, or even better.
The joke was too good not to be realized. This 1000tipla is not here to prove anything. His goal is to share a piece of the automobile and make it an offbeat tribute. Unlike the Espace F1, Vilebrequin’s Multipla can be started by one person and does not require a whole technical team. Full of comfort, it has Apple Carplay.
More than 1 million euros for the fastest Multipla in the world
Inevitably, such a project is expensive. To achieve this, the two Youtubers opened a participatory kitty, which managed to raise €1,096,111. A sum which is obviously not what Vilebrequin received in its pocket to carry out the project. Between all the expenses, they estimate a remainder of 32%, or approximately 350 000 euros. A tidy sum, which however does not seem to be sufficient for such a project.
They have thus joined forces with a tuner, W-AutoSport, to produce the 1000tipla. But to achieve such power, the engine must obviously be changed. As a result, adding so much power also requires replacing the chassis. For this, they unearthed a 650 horsepower Corvette C7 Z06. Once stripped, only the engine and chassis remain. From there, the stock body is removed from the Multipla to be fitted to the corvette.
Once the body is fitted, a kit is added to give it a more sporty look. For this, Sylvain and Pierre called on the king of tuning in Japan, the creator Kei Miura. The last step is then all the engine preparation. The 6.2L V8 must go from 650 to more than 1,000 horsepower. For this, it will have been necessary to change the crankshaft, the injectors, the compressor, etc. In the end, it’s a car that doesn’t have much of the Multipla and much of the Corvette at the same time.
Now the last step is to see him ride. This will be the case in a future video, knowing that when arriving at the Paris Motor Show, the 1000tipla had already rolled. All that remains is to put it on the test bench to find out how many horsepower it develops. Then there will be the “Merguez Tuning Show” event which will be the official presentation as well as the first public drive.
Moreover, we ran into Jean Todt, former co-driver then manager of the Ferrari Formula 1 team during the Schumacher years, on the Multipla stand. The opportunity to draw a parallel between this car is a potential run on a Formula 1 circuit. The problem is that with a sound power of 129 decibels, it cannot run on the circuit in France. But Pierre and Sylvain do not rule out being able to organize an event on the Bugatti Circuit, the 24 hours of Le Mans. “For us it’s yes, but it’s not in our hands” replied Sylvain. The recent GP Explorer on this same circuit may have opened the door a little more between the very closed world of the automobile and that of the Internet.
