User:Lesopc/DTV Mega Bertha

Mega Bertha ...This is the nickname given by members of the Vauxhall DTV team, to the car that was originally to have run as a racer in special saloon racing in the UK during the 1978 season. It would most likely have been driven by the late great Gerry Marshall. Unlike DTV's previous model known as Baby Bertha which was based mostly on the Firenza model, the DTV team opted for the then nearly new Cavalier as a basis for the racer owing to the fact that the Firenza and the Magnum were no longer in the Vauxhall range. The car itself was a Space Frame Chassis to which was mounted a Fibreglass rendition of the Mk1 Cavalier body designed by John Taylor albeit a little wider than the road car. For a powerplant there would have been a couple of options available, the first being a 2.5 litre turbocharged unit sourced from Opel. The other however would have been a Reynolds Aluminium-Chevrolet 8.1 litre V8 engine which can only be imagined as purely awesome for a saloon racer. This same engine was used in McLarens Can -Am racers with success. The car would have run in a front engine rear drive setup. Sadly this project was halted midway through 1977 as DTV wanted to concentrate instead on Rallying. Mega Bertha hence never raced at any time. There are very few images available of the car but in those that are, it appears that the car would have been painted in Silver with the bodyside stripes of Red, White and Green just as the Baby Bertha before it. At this point in history DTV ended it's successful racing operations after just 10 years of being. The remains of this race machine are last reported to be somewhere in Ireland in prvate ownership with a possible hope of being rebuilt and maybe run. The future may therefore allow everyone to see what a powerful machine this would have been.