Non Jensen Trivia

[WSpohn4]

David Ballantine called the other day and reminded me that the group was "off
the air", and I realised I hadn't noticed (although I had noted Sandro's
messages in passing), perhaps because I carry on a fair bit of conversation
with the group offline.

Glad you got it back in working order, Sandro.

Here's a trivia question that came up in conversation recently with a friend
in Vancouver when we were talking about the Italian member of the stable. He
is another trivia buff (he can quote who won what GP race unerringly for the
post war period).

We were discussing the fact that the Lamborghini engine was designed (by
Bizzarini) as a racing engine - or at least he thought he was designing it
for such use, which was then detuned for street use. We started wondering how
many other cars had this bass-ackwards design - normally it is a street
engine that is modified and tuned for racing use rather than the converse.
Examples of the latter are the Jaguars (winning Lemans with an engine
designed to power the new type of saloon), my MGA Twincam (began as a ZA
Magnette pushrod, ended up with a DOHC configuration and the land speed
record in the 2 litre class), and many other 'stock block' exercises
including the Lotus engine used in the JH.

I'm afraid I was only able to come up with one other instance of a racing
engine in a street car - the Alfa Montreal had a larger (2.5 l.) detuned
version of the 2 litre T-33 race engine. And I only thought of that because I
was looking at one last week.

Can anyone think of any other cars that had detuned (or not) racing engines -
and I mean only the engines that were designed for racing in the first place.

I don't recall Porsche ever installing a racing engine (that hadn't started
life in the first place as a street engine, before going racing) in a street
car, although I don't recall if the 4 cam engine was first produced for the
550 series (racing) and only later for the street Carreras - that was the
only other one I came up with as an 'if', and my Posrche history is a tad too
foggy to include it without researching a bit further.

Any other candidates out there?

Bill