I have owned the car since 2002 when I bought the car while looking for a cheap way to do some motor sport and came across the Short Course Off Road Racing club, which I now race the car with. The car has a 3500cc rover V8 mated to a type 2 (bus) gearbox and modified type 1 (beetle) suspension.



Since buying the car we (my dad and I, with a little help when required) have done a lot of work on the car ironing out various problems and improving different aspects. These included fitting an uprated clutch as the stock one couldn’t handle the torque from the V8, new shock absorbers, new gear linkage (the car has a single central seat) and various other items including a stage II head for the V8. More recently we have been fitting widening the front and rear track by modifying the suspension and fitted longer wider rear arms to increase the rear suspension travel to help cope with the jumps better. Next up is a new pair of tyres to replace the rears as it needs more grip in the mud.



The car is not currently road licensed so is for off-road only and is a bit of a beast but a massive amount of fun! The car weighs around 750kg without a driver and pushes out something in the region of 170bhp, with a very wide torque band! It will spin its wheels happily in third with the merest hint of mud and big opposite lock driving is the order of the day!



In the dry it leaps forward and on a straight run you get through the gears pretty quickly, there aren’t many cars in SCORR that it can’t show a clean pair of heels to in a straight line. The long wheelbase makes it nice and stable on sweeping corners, where you can get a nice power slide going, but tricky in the twisty stuff - you have to throw it into corners pretty aggressively to get it round quickly.



All round the car is great fun and despite the large engine and slightly heavy tail it is fairly easy to drive off-road as long as you treat the loud pedal gently! Racing it with SCORR is brilliant fun – some of the courses are excellent and the experience of slipping and sliding your car around a mud bath with 4 others is one not to be missed!!

Just a quick note to say if you want to check out some more crazy off-road action go to Short Course Off Road Racing Championship...

Mark.....looks like good fun :blink: ......but I dunno If I could bring myself to get that caked in mud!......I was talking to your dad about your car......with that big V8 hanging out the back I thought your car would be popping wheelies all the time, but I'm told it's actually quite heavy on the front

I was on the volkszone website and noticed another fug owner also racing in Scorr.......he races the green camoflage fug-2, he was called "Mogs".....I tried to e-mail him via the volkszone website, but his mail box was full.....be sure to let him know about this new Fugitive forum......his car also looked as mental as yours!.....would be interesting to hear from him????......I think he owned 2 fugs if I remember rightly.......

do you ever do any races in the south east?.....if so I would be interested in coming along to check it out???.......I'm based in essex

[COLOR=purple][SIZE=7]Ah-Ha so the old Mark Haynes 'off-road rage' appears again! i remember driving it at the NAS. Poor old Mark never had much luck with it. Have you fixed the problems with the driveshafts?

regards. Pat.

Pat:

Yeah the driveshaft problems were solved by getting a Kugelwagen stub axle which allows campervan CVs to be used with the beetle hubs - bascially the beetle CVs that were on there just didn't have enough angular movement in them.

We have made a lot of changes to the car to sort out various problems with different parts. e.g. when I got it the car had about 9 degrees bump steer - solved by changing the position of the rack, knackered shock absorbers, engine HT leads not connected properly, various worn out engine ancillaries, massive play in the gear linkage and other problems, all of which have been sorted.

Without wanting to offend MH, I think it would be perfectly fair to say that the car is significantly better than it was when we bought it!!!

Knighty:

The muddy races are some of the best - as long as you can see where you are going you can slide around and generally have a real laugh.

There aren't really many races down in the south - the nearest one last year was near Banbury (Oxfordshire). Bit of a pain as it means a lot of travelling for me as I live in Surrey.

Yeah I know moggy - there are a couple of other Fugitives running in SCORR, I suggest you email info@scorr.org.uk and ask them to put a link to fugitives.co.uk on the site.

Although the V8 hangs way out the back it is actually not too heavy - about 140kg as a "long" engine (i.e. no ancillaries) which is less than a 2.0 pinto or similar. The front end is not too light - it is more tail heavy than a VW engined fugitive but not bad compared to an iron block 4 cylinder. It does understeer in the mud unless you throw it around though - which makes for more fun!


Regards,

Mark

Hiya probably long gone now but just having a look through the site and saw your pictures of my old car ! I built and raced this fugative in the late 80's early nineties ,I raced it with the all wheel drive club for about 10 years ,it started life with vw swing axle I then changed it to IRS and fitted the v8 in about 1994 good to see it out and about again where is it now ?