1911 Fiat S76 Roars 28.4-Liter 4-Cylinder Engine At Goodwood FoS

After checking out the tiny Honda E, we figured having a look at an entirely different car would be appropriate. Also going up the hill during the first day of the 2019 Goodwood Festival of Speed is the one-of-two Fiat S76 a.k.a. "The Beast of Turin." Laughing in the face of downsizing ever since the early 1910s, the monster is basically a 28.4-liter four-cylinder engine to which a car has been attached.

Built with the sole purpose of taking down the land speed record held at that time by the Blitzen Benz, the Fiat S76 managed to hit an impressive 116 mph (187 kph) at the Saltburn Sands beach in England. That wasn't the end of the story as it was later tested and reached 132.27 mph (213 kph) in Ostende, Belgium in December 1913, but failed to make the return run, so it was never officially crowned as the fastest car.

As for the S76 itself, its massive inline-four engine hooked up to a four-speed gearbox produced 290 horsepower (210 kW) and had to move a car that weighed a 1,650 kilograms (3,638 pounds) – incredibly heavy for a vehicle from that era. After the end of World War I, the car was dismantled and it ended up in Australia without the engine. It was then rebuilt with a Stutz engine, but perished in a crash in the early 1920s.

Duncan Pittaway – the man driving it in this video – obtained the chassis of the S76 in 2003 and eventually found the engine from the other car. As for the body, radiator, and the gearbox, these had to be built using the original Fiat drawings and photographs from when The Beast of Turin was still alive. The engine roared for the first time in decades towards the end of 2014, but the car wasn't fully operational until 2015 when it made an appearance at the same Goodwood FoS.