Wildcat V8 engines

In 1995 I was looking to get more power from my Rover V8 engines and I contacted Ian Richardson at Wildcat Engineering to talk about buying some performance bits, during the conversation Ian mentioned he had raced in special saloons back in the day and was interested in my car and might come to see me at my last race in 1994.

Ian came to that meeting and brought with him his first prototype castings of his Wildcat cylinder heads, we had a good chat, I had a good race and at the end of the day we said we would get in touch.

About a week later I recieved a phone call from Ian saying he would like to let me use his new heads in my car and help with the development, however I would have to finish preparing the heads . We soon realised I needed a better short motor and before we knew it Ian was basically supplying all the parts to build a 5.0 litre.

Finishing the heads took up most of 1996, myself and good friend John Felstead travelled down to Rhydymain in mid Wales virtually every weekend of 1996 preparing the heads and block under Ian’s guidance before I did the final assembly in my garage.

We managed to get some features on the cylinder heads and completed engine in Cars and Car Conversions Magazine, links to the articles below.

In the end I built two Wildcat engines with Ian which was great fun, the engines are detailed below.

Wildcat 5.0 Litre V8 Engine

This engine was the first prototype engine to use Wildcat cylinder heads, myself, John Felstead and Ian Richardson put this engine together, its sister engine was used by the works Morgan in the FIA GT championship in 1995. ….. this engine was terrific, it produced a genuine 400 bhp and 330 ft.lbf torque and made a good noise too ! I raced with this engine in 34 races between 1997 and 2001 when unfortunately it snapped a con-rod at Croft in 2001. The short motor was destroyed, but the heads survived.

Click here for 5.0 Litre Wildcat V8 Techical Details

Click here for Cars & Car C onversions Magazine – Big Heads Article May 1997

Wildcat 6.0 Litre V8 Engine

This engine is one of the largest capacity Rover V8s ever, it used a prototype 4.0″ bore block and Stage 2 Cylinder Heads from Wildcat Engineering .

It produced 430 BHP which was much less than the 500bhp that we were hoping for and was very problematic, as a result it was only raced 14 times over 3 seasons (2005 to 2007) and I only finished 5 times !!

Click here for 6.0 Litre Wildcat V8 Technical Details

For build photos