Five Great Rear Engine Cars

*That aren't VW or Porsche.

Welcome to Rear Engine week here at Retro Scene Mag.  We've got some cool stuff lined up with week, we will start with a small challenge we set ourselves, name five great rear engine cars that aren't Porsche or VW.  We then made our life more complicated by deciding to cover a couple of them in depth later in the week.  Here is our five, can you guess what we missed out for future in depth coverage?

1. Renault Dauphine

The Dauphine is one of my favourite cars, although it probably lives on a list titled "Cars I'll Never Own", partly for cost, partly because I don't know enough to own one, but mainly because I wouldn't want to ruin it by accident in any way shape or form.  The car replaced the similarly rear engine 4CV in 1956, it was a sales success in the UK and other markets.  Whilst it is certainly a pretty car the performance hardly set the world alight, it was under powered and didn't handle that well either.  Gordini did their best to give it a bit of power, but it was forever cursed to be pretty and slow.  That is until people started sticking interesting engines in them!


2. Chevrolet Corvair

Okay I'll get it out of the way, "Unsafe At Any Speed", yes this car is infamous, for all the wrong reasons.  Literally it is infamous for the wrong reasons, the allegations levelled against it were pretty much unfounded and incorrect.  It wasn't this that caused the Corvair to lose sales though, the newly launched Mustang really sounded the death knell for the car sadly.  The Corvair is a great looking car, it is very similar in shape to the VW Type 34 Razor, so anything that looks good on a VW Type 34 looks good on a Corvair, just bigger!  They have been used in racing as well as receiving a number of engine transplants over the years, particularly V8s in place of their flat 6 power plant.


3. Hillman Imp

Bring things down a couple of sizes we have the Hillman Imp.  874cc's of straight four, overhead cam, Coventry Climax derived powered goodness push the little Imp along in its light weight shell and small wheelbase.  The car has been successfully campaigned in racing series as well as having a loyal owners club.  Some of the modified version are running some screaming motors, from bike engines to Rover K-series.  The Imp also provided the basis for the Clan Crusader, Davrian and Ginetta G15 kit cars.  There are a few great Imps currently being built that we hope to see breaking cover over the next year.


4. Tatra T603 and T613

Tatra, where would the world be without you?  Probably without a VW Beetle for a start.  Tatra's cars were always very advanced engineering wise for their time, the first production aerodynamic car (the T77).  You can keep your flat four air cooled engines, everyone knows that V8s are where it is at, so Tatra win in our book simply because they have aircooled ones in the magnificent cool T603 and later the T613.  If I had the money there would be a Tatra on my drive right now.  There is something very special about these cars, the height of luxury from a communist country, diplomat chic, impressive engineering and unique styling, without a doubt one of the finest cars ever, rear engine or not.


5. Fiat 126

From the sublime to the... well not actually ridiculous, this is here to represent all the little Fiats.  City cars before the world of Smart forTwo, small, rear engine and not hugely powerful.  They have, along with their earlier counterparts, the 500 and 600, got a cult following of people willing to stick silly engines in them or style them beautifully.  Just check out the picture of Stuey's blue 126 to show you just how cool these little, inexpensive cars can look.  You've probably got spare space to put one in a cupboard somewhere too.


Well there is a small introduction to this week.  Did you spot what was missing??