In 2001, Jaguar launched the car that was supposed to transform the company.

Ford had spent billions rebuilding Jaguar, but the brand was still selling nowhere near enough cars. The answer was Project X400: a compact executive saloon designed to take Jaguar directly into the territory dominated by the BMW 3-Series, Mercedes C-Class and Audi A4.

There was just one problem.

Underneath, it was based on the same platform as the Ford Mondeo.

The British press called it a Mondeo in a dinner jacket. Critics accused Jaguar of diluting one of the most prestigious names in motoring. And yet beneath the badge engineering jokes was a far stranger story — bespoke Jaguar engines, rear-biased all-wheel drive, one of the most dramatically improved factories in Europe, and a car that briefly gave Jaguar its best-ever year in America.

This is the story of the Jaguar X-Type — arguably the greatest Ford Mondeo ever made.

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📚 ORDER MY NEW BOOK "History Written by Losers" — out now!

The true story of global power has been whitewashed by the victors and the fixers. This book tells the side of history they tried to bury.

👉 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH

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🏁 IN THIS EPISODE

We uncover why Ford believed Jaguar needed to sell 200,000 cars a year, why the X-Type ended up using the next Ford Mondeo's platform instead of a bespoke rear-wheel-drive chassis, and how Jaguar tried to turn a transverse-engine family-car architecture into a genuine BMW 3-Series rival.

We look at the heavily reworked Duratec V6 engines, Jaguar's Traction-4 all-wheel-drive system and its rear-biased 40:60 torque split, the real amount of the car that was actually shared with the Mondeo, and how Ford completely rebuilt the notoriously troubled Halewood factory to produce it.

We also explore the X-Type's surprisingly strong launch, its battle with the BMW 3-Series, Audi A4 and Mercedes C-Class, why Jaguar introduced cheaper front-wheel-drive and diesel versions, and how a car launched as an AWD petrol V6 sports saloon eventually became best known as a front-wheel-drive diesel estate.

Plus, the forgotten supercharged 330-horsepower X-Type known as the Fire Engine, the Racing Concept that never raced, the transfer-case and gearbox failures that damaged the car's reputation, the collapse of its resale values, and how a programme intended to save Jaguar ended with Ford selling the entire company to Tata.

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🔗 LINKS & SUPPORT

📚 The book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH
📺 Documentary channel: https://youtube.com/@thatjasonhassett
🔔 Subscribe for weekly post-mortems on the cars, companies and engineering decisions that shaped modern motoring.

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#JaguarXType #Jaguar #FordMondeo #ProjectX400 #Ford #CarHistory #BritishCars #ClassicJaguar #Halewood #JaguarCars #TheCarNerd

In 1983, Mercedes built a car that BMW couldn’t answer.The 190E 2.3-16 had a Cosworth-developed cylinder head, sixteen valves, and a set of world endurance records before customers had even taken delivery.BMW’s chairman walked into Motorsport, turned to engineer Paul Rosche, and gave him one instruction: build a sporting engine for the 3-Series.Fourteen days later, the first prototype was running.What followed was not simply a faster E30. BMW cut apart an M1 cylinder head, bolted it to a four-cylinder block descended from an ordinary family saloon, redesigned almost every exterior panel on the car, and built thousands of road cars purely because the racing regulations demanded it.The result was the E30 M3 — a car designed backwards from the racetrack, and one that would go on to become arguably the most successful touring car ever built.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━📚 ORDER MY NEW BOOK "History Written by Losers" — out now!The true story of global power has been whitewashed by the victors and the fixers. This book tells the side of history they tried to bury.👉 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🏁 IN THIS EPISODEWe uncover why the Mercedes 190E forced BMW to respond, how Paul Rosche created the S14 engine in just fourteen days, why BMW chose four cylinders instead of six, and how Group A regulations shaped almost every major part of the car.We also look at how little bodywork the M3 actually shared with a standard E30, how it took on the Ford Sierra RS500 Cosworth, the controversy surrounding its first WTCC race, Roberto Ravaglia’s championship win, its success in rallying, and the Evolution models that pushed the homologation rules even further.Plus, the strange stories of the 320is, the M3 Convertible, BMW Motorsport’s one-off M3 pickup, and how Audi and Mercedes eventually brought the E30 M3 era to an end.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🔗 LINKS & SUPPORT📚 The book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH📺 Documentary channel: https://youtube.com/@thatjasonhassett🔔 Subscribe for weekly post-mortems on the cars, companies and engineering decisions that shaped modern motoring.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━#BMWM3 #E30M3 #BMWMotorsport #PaulRosche #Mercedes190E #TouringCars #DTM #GroupA #CarHistory #HomologationSpecial #ClassicBMW #TheCarNerd

In 2001, Renault built a hatchback that could barely outrun the hatchback it was based on.The doors were standard Clio. So was the roofline, tailgate and badge.But the back seats were gone.In their place sat a three-liter V6 from a family saloon, mounted sideways directly behind the driver and sending its power to the rear wheels.Renault had taken inspiration from the legendary 5 Turbo and created one of the strangest hot hatches ever sold.There was just one problem.The first Clio V6 was terrifying to drive.It cost roughly twice as much as the ordinary Clio Sport, was barely faster on a tight road, and became notorious for suddenly snapping into oversteer — catching out even experienced motoring journalists.Then the company building it went bankrupt.And somehow, that disaster helped Renault finally turn the Clio V6 into the car it should have been from the beginning.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━📚 ORDER MY NEW BOOK "History Written by Losers" — out now!The true story of global power has been whitewashed by the victors and the fixers. This book tells the side of history they tried to bury.👉 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🏁 IN THIS EPISODEWe uncover the extraordinary story of the Renault Clio V6:Why Renault decided to put a V6 in the middle of a ClioHow the Renault 5 Turbo inspired the entire projectWhy Tom Walkinshaw Racing was chosen to build itHow ordinary Clio shells travelled from France to Sweden to become V6 monstersWhy so much of the car came from Renault’s existing parts binWhy the Phase 1 became notorious for sudden snap oversteerHow a cheap Clio Sport could keep up with it on real roadsWhy the collapse of TWR forced Renault to completely rethink the carHow Renault transformed the Phase 2 into a far better machineWhy Porsche engineers ended up helping tune its engine electronicsAnd how the Clio V6 became one of the most collectible modern Renaults━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🔗 LINKS & SUPPORT📚 The book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH📺 Documentary channel: https://youtube.com/@thatjasonhassett🔔 Subscribe for weekly post-mortems on the cars, companies and engineering decisions that shaped modern motoring.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━#RenaultClioV6 #ClioV6 #RenaultSport #HotHatch #TomWalkinshaw #TWR #Renault5Turbo #CarHistory #FrenchCars #ModernClassic #TheCarNerd

Group B Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlRHygh59386nA5Cost2pUW4p3OkNMlK7

In 1984, British journalists watched a rally car charge toward them on a cinema screen.

Then a real MG Metro 6R4 burst straight through it.

Behind the driver sat a Rover V8 with two cylinders literally cut off — because the real engine still didn’t exist.

Austin Rover had decided to turn one of Britain’s most ordinary hatchbacks into a Group B monster capable of fighting Audi, Peugeot and Lancia.

Williams designed the chassis. A former Cosworth engineer created a purpose-built naturally aspirated V6. And after more than four years of development, the 6R4 made its WRC debut in 1985 and finished third.

That would be its best result.

But the engine’s story was only beginning.

It later became a twin-turbo rallycross champion — and eventually evolved into the engine used in the Jaguar XJ220, briefly the fastest production car in the world.

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📚 ORDER MY NEW BOOK "History Written by Losers" — out now!

The true story of global power has been whitewashed by the victors and the fixers. This book tells the side of history they tried to bury.

👉 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🏁 IN THIS EPISODE

We uncover the extraordinary story of the MG Metro 6R4:

• Why Williams Formula One helped build it
• Why Austin Rover rejected turbocharging
• How engineers created a V6 by cutting two cylinders off a Rover V8
• How the purpose-built V64V made over 400 horsepower at 9,000 rpm
• Why its 1985 RAC Rally podium was never repeated
• How Group B ended just as the car was becoming competitive
• How the 6R4 found a second life in rallycross
• And how its engine eventually evolved into the Jaguar XJ220’s twin-turbo V6

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🔗 LINKS & SUPPORT

📚 The book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH
📺 Documentary channel: https://youtube.com/@thatjasonhassett
🔔 Subscribe for weekly post-mortems on the cars, companies and engineering decisions that shaped modern motoring.

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#MGMetro6R4 #GroupB #Rally #WRC #TonyPond #JaguarXJ220 #WilliamsF1 #BritishLeyland #CarHistory #Motorsport #TheCarNerd

Group B Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlRHygh59386nA5Cost2pUW4p3OkNMlK7In January 1983, high in the mountains above Monte Carlo, men working for Lancia went out onto frozen rally stages in the middle of the night.They were spreading agricultural salt across the ice.Not because they were cheating.Because nobody had thought to write a rule saying they couldn't.Lancia was preparing to fight Audi's revolutionary four-wheel-drive Quattro with a car that should already have been obsolete: the rear-wheel-drive 037.Audi had more traction.Lancia had less weight, instant supercharged power, a gearbox mechanics could replace in around twelve minutes—and Cesare Fiorio, a team boss willing to exploit every gap he could find in the rulebook.Against almost every expectation, it worked.In 1983, the Lancia 037 defeated Audi and won the World Rally Championship for manufacturers.It remains the last rear-wheel-drive car ever to do it.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━📚 ORDER MY NEW BOOK "History Written by Losers" — out now!The true story of global power has been whitewashed by the victors and the fixers. This book tells the side of history they tried to bury.👉 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🏁 IN THIS EPISODEIn this video, we uncover the extraordinary story of the Lancia Rally 037: how Lancia deliberately rejected the four-wheel-drive revolution, engineered an incredibly light and serviceable rear-wheel-drive rally car—and then used strategy, loopholes and some of the greatest drivers of the era to defeat Audi at its own game.Why Lancia Rejected Four-Wheel Drive:How Cesare Fiorio and engineer Sergio Limone looked at the dominant Audi Quattro and focused not on its traction, but on its weight, understeer, complexity and difficulty to repair.Turning the Beta Montecarlo Into a Group B Weapon:How Abarth and Dallara stripped the Lancia Beta Montecarlo down to its central steel safety cell, added chromoly tubular subframes and transformed a road-going coupé into the SE037 rally car.Why the 037 Had Two Bubbles in Its Roof:How Pininfarina created the distinctive raised sections above the driver and co-driver simply to make space for their helmets without increasing the entire roof height or hurting the car's aerodynamics.The Ferrari Engineer Behind the Engine:How the 037's two-litre four-cylinder descended from Aurelio Lampredi's famous Fiat twin-cam architecture—the same basic engine family that had already powered Fiat to multiple World Rally Championships.Why Lancia Used a Supercharger Instead of a Turbo:How the mechanically driven Abarth Volumex blower eliminated the turbo lag that plagued early-1980s rally cars, giving the rear-wheel-drive 037 immediate throttle response and allowing drivers to control its slides with extraordinary precision.Turning Waste Boost Into Gearbox Cooling:How Abarth routed excess supercharger pressure toward the gearbox oil cooler, converting air that would otherwise have been dumped into useful cooling.Why the 037 Had Two Rear Shock Absorbers Per Wheel:How Lancia deliberately doubled the rear Bilstein dampers to control heat generated by a powerful rear-wheel-drive car constantly sliding and spinning its tyres across long rally stages.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🔗 LINKS & SUPPORT📚 The book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH📺 Documentary channel: https://youtube.com/@thatjasonhassett🔔 Subscribe for weekly post-mortems on the cars, companies and engineering decisions that shaped modern motoring.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━#Lancia037 #Lancia #GroupB #WRC #Rally #AudiQuattro #WalterRohrl #MarkkuAlen #CesareFiorio #CarHistory #AutomotiveHistory #Motorsport #CarNerd #TheCarNerd

In the summer of 2000, evo magazine strapped timing equipment to a British sports car almost nobody had heard of.It hit 60 mph in 4.1 seconds and 100 mph in 10.2—beating the Porsche 911 GT3, evo’s reigning Car of the Year.The Porsche cost £76,500.The Noble M12 cost £45,000.And its rear lights came from a Ford Mondeo.The M12 was built by Lee Noble, a self-taught engineer with no degree, almost no advertising budget and a habit of walking away from the companies he created. His earlier Ultima chassis had even been used by McLaren during development of the F1.But the M12 would become his masterpiece: a twin-turbocharged, mid-engined supercar built from ordinary Ford components, assembled partly in South Africa, with no ABS, no traction control and initially not even an anti-roll bar.It embarrassed cars costing several times more.And then the company behind it fell apart.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━📚 ORDER MY NEW BOOK "History Written by Losers" — out now!The true story of global power has been whitewashed by the victors and the fixers. This book tells the side of history they tried to bury.👉 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🏁 IN THIS EPISODEIn this video, we uncover the extraordinary story of the Noble M12: how a self-taught British engineer created one of the fastest sports cars of its era from Ford parts, fibreglass and a steel spaceframe—and built a machine capable of humiliating some of the most expensive supercars on Earth.The Chassis That Helped Build the McLaren F1:How Lee Noble’s Ultima Mk3 became the basis for McLaren development mules Albert and Edward, used to test components for Gordon Murray’s legendary F1.Noble Automotive’s Five-Car Failure:Why Lee Noble’s first production car, the M10, lasted just five examples—and why customers waiting for one asked to transfer their deposits to the coupé that replaced it.Building a Supercar Without Supercar Money:How Noble avoided bespoke engines, expensive tooling and conventional mass-production methods, instead creating a steel spaceframe reinforced with bonded aluminium and a structural roll cage.The Supercar Built in South Africa:Why Hi-Tech Automotive in Port Elizabeth constructed the chassis and bodies before shipping unfinished cars to Leicestershire to receive their engines and gearboxes.The Ford Parts Supercar:Mondeo rear lights and mirrors, Ford sensors, a family-car battery—and a Duratec V6 transformed with twin Garrett turbochargers into the heart of a 1,000-kilogram supercar.Why the M12 Had No Anti-Roll Bars:How Noble deliberately allowed the suspension to work independently over broken British roads, controlling body movement through geometry, spring rates and damper tuning instead.The £45,000 Porsche Killer:How the original 310-horsepower M12 GTO recorded 0–60 mph in 4.1 seconds at Millbrook and triggered a wave of international press coverage Noble could never have afforded to buy.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🔗 LINKS & SUPPORT📚 The book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH📺 Documentary channel: https://youtube.com/@thatjasonhassett🔔 Subscribe for weekly post-mortems on the cars, companies and engineering decisions that shaped modern motoring.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━#NobleM12 #NobleM400 #LeeNoble #BritishCars #Supercars #CarHistory #AutomotiveHistory #Engineering #McLarenF1 #CarNerd #TheCarNerd

In 1974, a four-door Japanese family saloon entered the most destructive rally on Earth.The East African Safari Rally covered roughly six thousand kilometres of flooded public roads, volcanic dust, mud, rocks and mechanical punishment. Porsche led—until its suspension collapsed. The car that came through to win was a Mitsubishi Lancer driven by Kenyan mechanic’s son Joginder Singh.It was Mitsubishi’s first World Rally Championship victory.Twenty-two years would pass before a Lancer won a world title. Mitsubishi spent most of that time building rally cars that were too hot, too heavy, too late—or simply the wrong shape entirely.The result of those failures was the Lancer Evolution: a brutally effective road-going homologation special that transformed an ordinary commuter saloon into one of the most successful rally cars ever created.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━📚 ORDER MY NEW BOOK "History Written by Losers" — out now! The true story of global power has been whitewashed by the victors and the fixers. This book tells the side of history they tried to bury. 👉 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🏁 IN THIS EPISODEIn this video, we uncover the extraordinary history of the Mitsubishi Lancer: how a lightweight family car conquered the brutal Safari Rally, disappeared from competition, returned with a series of deeply flawed machines—and eventually produced the Lancer Evolution that dominated the World Rally Championship.What’s inside:The Family Car That Survived the “Car Breaker”:How Mitsubishi reinforced an ordinary 1.6-litre Lancer to survive six thousand kilometres of mud, rocks and flooded Kenyan roads—and defeated Porsche and Lancia in the 1974 Safari Rally.Four Lancers, Four Finishers:Why simply reaching the end of the Safari was considered an achievement, and how Mitsubishi returned in 1976 to finish first, second, third and sixth.The Turbocharged Lancer That Cooked Itself:How Mitsubishi created one of rallying’s first electronically controlled turbo engines—then discovered the car could not compete in hot countries without overheating.The Group B Mitsubishi That Never Raced:The story of the carbon-and-Kevlar Starion 4WD, its front-midship engine layout, experimental three-valve technology and the rule change that killed it before it entered a single World Championship rally.The Galant That Was Too Big:How the Galant VR-4 introduced the 4G63T engine, full-time four-wheel drive and hydraulic four-wheel steering—but remained too heavy and unwilling to rotate on tight stages.Compressing a Galant Into a Lancer:How Mitsubishi transferred the Galant’s complete turbocharged four-wheel-drive powertrain into a smaller saloon and accidentally created the first Lancer Evolution.The Evolution That Couldn’t Handle:Why the original Evo was ferociously fast but suffered from chassis flex, severe understeer and suspension geometry that changed in the middle of a corner.Fixing the Evo ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🔗 LINKS & SUPPORT📚 The book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH📺 Documentary channel: https://youtube.com/@thatjasonhassett🔔 Subscribe for weekly post-mortems on the cars, companies and engineering decisions that shaped modern motoring.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━#MitsubishiLancer #LancerEvolution #MitsubishiEvo #TommiMakinen #WorldRallyChampionship #WRC #RallyCars #AutomotiveHistory #CarNerd #Engineering #JoginderSingh #TheCarNerd

In 2009, Glass’s Guide examined more than six thousand three-year-old cars in Britain to find which had lost their owners the most money.Second, third and fourth place were all Rovers—a brand that no longer existed.But the worst depreciating car wasn’t a Rover.It was the Alfa Romeo 166.An Italian executive saloon with double-wishbone suspension, one of the greatest V6 engines ever put into a road car, and technology that would eventually transform the diesel engine forever.After just three years, it was worth 14.4 per cent of its original price.The remarkable thing is that the Alfa Romeo 166 wasn’t really a bad car.In many ways, it was an extraordinary one.It was simply built by a company that repeatedly made exactly the wrong decision at exactly the wrong moment.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━📚 ORDER MY NEW BOOK "History Written by Losers" — out now! The true story of global power has been whitewashed by the victors and the fixers. This book tells the side of history they tried to bury. 👉 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🏁 IN THIS EPISODEIn this video, we uncover the extraordinary story of the Alfa Romeo 166: a beautifully engineered Italian flagship that arrived late, launched with the wrong face, pioneered technology its rivals would profit from, and became one of the fastest-depreciating cars ever sold in Britain.What’s inside:The Alfa That Had to Replace the 164:How Alfa Romeo began developing its new flagship as early as 1990, initially planning to simply reskin the existing 164 before Fiat management realised the resulting car would already be obsolete by the time it reached showrooms.Turning a Lancia Into an Alfa:How Alfa abandoned Project 934 and started again using the Lancia Kappa’s Type E platform—then threw away much of its suspension and engineered something considerably more sophisticated underneath.The Diesel Technology Fiat Gave Away:How Fiat developed common-rail diesel injection, created the system that would revolutionise modern diesel engines, then sold the patents to Bosch because it lacked the money to industrialise it.The First Common-Rail Passenger Car:How the Alfa Romeo 156 JTD became the first production passenger car in the world sold with common-rail diesel injection—and how the same technology would become crucial to the 166.The Busso V6:The story of Giuseppe Busso’s legendary aluminium V6, its chromed intake runners and the 2.5-litre, 3.0-litre and extraordinarily strange 2.0-litre turbocharged versions offered in the 166.The Two-Litre V6 Turbo:Why Italian tax laws encouraged Alfa Romeo to shrink its famous V6 below two litres, bolt on a Garrett turbocharger and produce 205 horsepower from an engine designed almost entirely for its domestic market.The 166’s Forgotten Four-Cylinder:Why the entry-level Twin Spark—with variable valve timing, a variable-length inlet manifold and two spark plugs per cylinder—was far more interesting than its position at the bottom of the range suggested.The Final Busso 3.2:How the facelift brought the 166 its ultimate engine—a 3.2-litre, 240-horsepower Busso V6 paired exclusively with a six-speed manual gearbox.The Car Worth 14.4 Per Cent:How catastrophic depreciation, weak dealers, expensive cambelt servicing and reliability concerns reduced a £30,000 executive saloon to a fraction of its original value.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🔗 LINKS & SUPPORT📚 The book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH📺 Documentary channel: https://youtube.com/@thatjasonhassett🔔 Subscribe for weekly post-mortems on the cars, companies and engineering decisions that shaped modern motoring.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━#AlfaRomeo #AlfaRomeo166 #BussoV6 #GiuseppeBusso #Alfa166 #ItalianCars #CarHistory #AutomotiveHistory #CarNerd #Engineering #ClassicCars #TheCarNerd

In 1993, the man who saved the Swiss watch industry decided to reinvent the car. Nicolas Hayek imagined a cheap, colourful electric runabout that people could personalise like a Swatch—small enough for two passengers, city streets, and, in his words, “two cases of beer.”Volkswagen dismissed it as an elephant’s roller skate. Mercedes-Benz agreed to build it.The result was one of the cleverest, strangest, and most financially disastrous cars ever produced: the original Smart Car. Its steel safety cage could survive an impact with an S-Class, its plastic body panels could be swapped in under an hour, and its tiny footprint allowed it to park sideways in spaces ordinary cars could not use.But beneath the brilliant engineering was a compromised design, a hated gearbox, a near-disastrous stability problem, and a development programme that reportedly cost Mercedes billions.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━📚 ORDER MY NEW BOOK "History Written by Losers" — out now! The true story of global power has been whitewashed by the victors and the fixers. This book tells the side of history they tried to bury. 👉 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🏁 IN THIS EPISODEIn this video, we uncover the extraordinary history of the original Smart Car: how a Swiss watchmaker’s electric dream collided with decades of abandoned Mercedes engineering, produced an unmistakable automotive icon, and became the biggest money-losing European car programme of the modern era.What’s inside:The Watchmaker Who Wanted to Reinvent Cars:How Swatch creator Nicolas Hayek imagined a cheap, personal electric car—and why Volkswagen rejected it almost immediately.Mercedes’ Secret Microcar Project:The forgotten experiments that Mercedes engineer Johann Tomforde had been developing since the late 1960s.The Electric Car That Became Petrol:Why wheel-hub motors, experimental batteries, and a disastrous frozen-lake test forced Mercedes to abandon Hayek’s original drivetrain.Engineering a Two-and-a-Half-Metre Car:How a rear-mounted engine, staggered seats, plastic panels, and the exposed Tridion safety cell made the Smart unlike anything else on the road.The Rollover Crisis:How the Mercedes A-Class failed the infamous Swedish moose test—and exposed a potentially catastrophic problem inside the Smart just months before launch.The Safest Tiny Car in Europe:Why Mercedes crashed a 730-kilogram Smart directly into an S-Class, and how its rigid passenger cage survived an impact that should have crushed it.The Most Expensive Cheap Car Ever Made:How bespoke components, dedicated factories, glass-tower dealerships, and weak American sales reportedly cost Mercedes around €3.3 billion.Crossblades, Roadsters and a Twin-Engine V6:The bizarre performance cars Smart created while the company was already losing money—including a Brabus prototype with two engines combined into one.The Car Hayek Wanted All Along:How Mercedes eventually removed the petrol engine and hated gearbox, installed batteries supplied by Tesla, and finally created the electric city car Hayek had proposed decades earlier.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🔗 LINKS & SUPPORT📚 The book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH📺 Documentary channel: https://youtube.com/@thatjasonhassett🔔 Subscribe for weekly post-mortems on the cars, companies, and engineering decisions that shaped modern motoring.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━#SmartCar #SmartFortwo #MercedesBenz #AutomotiveHistory #CarNerd #Engineering #ElectricCars #NicolasHayek #Swatch #TheCarNerd

Group B Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlRHygh59386nA5Cost2pUW4p3OkNMlK7In the Ford RS200, the engine sits behind the driver—but the gearbox sits ahead of him, down by his knees. Power travels the entire length of the car to the front, then turns around and comes back again.Ford built it this way to create the most perfectly balanced rally car possible. It spent more than £10 million developing it, produced barely enough cars to satisfy the rulebook, and arrived just as the championship it was designed to win was being outlawed.The RS200 raced in the World Rally Championship for a single season and never won an event. Yet after Group B disappeared, it became one of the most dominant rallycross cars ever built—and eventually the fastest-accelerating production car in the world.So was the RS200 a catastrophic failure, or simply a brilliant machine built for the wrong moment?━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━📚 ORDER MY NEW BOOK “History Written by Losers” — out now!The true story of global power has been whitewashed by the victors and the fixers. This book tells the side of history they tried to bury.👉 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🏁 IN THIS EPISODEIn this video, we uncover the complete story of the Ford RS200: the clean-sheet Group B rally car born from the failure of the abandoned Escort RS1700T programme.From its bizarre forward-and-back drivetrain and Formula One-inspired chassis to disputed homologation numbers, fatal crashes and its extraordinary second life in rallycross, this is the story of a car that arrived too late to fulfil its original purpose—but became legendary after the rulebook that created it disappeared.What’s inside:The Rally Car Ford Threw Away:How Ford abandoned its championship-winning rear-wheel-drive Escort, spent years developing the obsolete RS1700T, and was forced to begin again after the Audi Quattro changed rallying forever.The Rally Car Built Backwards:Why Ford placed the engine behind the driver, the gearbox ahead of his feet, and sent the power forwards before sending it back to the rear wheels.The Questionable 200-Car Homologation:How FIA inspectors counted two hundred RS200s, despite factory records suggesting that only around 144 to 148 complete cars were actually finished.One Season in Group B:The RS200’s promising podium debut, the tragedy in Portugal, the fatal Rallye Hessen crash, and the chain of events that brought the most extreme era of rallying to an end.The Failure That Became the Fastest:How the RS200 found its true home in rallycross, produced as much as 800 horsepower, and later set a 0–60 mph record that stood for twelve years.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🔗 LINKS & SUPPORT📚 The book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH📺 Documentary channel: https://youtube.com/@thatjasonhassett🔔 Subscribe for weekly post-mortems on the cars, companies, and engineering decisions that shaped modern motoring.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━#FordRS200 #GroupB #Rally #AutomotiveHistory #CarNerd #FordMotorsport #RallyHistory #MotorsportHistory #Cosworth #TheCarNerd