When I talk about the same model of car that swapped its engine location, I mean cars that are on the same basic platform, not just have the same name, so things like the VW Golf-based Volkswagen New Beetle or the 2011 version of the Beetle do not count, even though they share a name and general look as the original rear-engined Type 1 VW Beetle. Same goes for the modern, front-engined Fiat 500s; like the modern Beetles, they’re an entirely different platform and everything. So those types of cars don’t count. So what does count? What I’m hoping to find are cars that were designed with, say, a rear engine and then later in production converted to front, or vice-versa. Or went from front to mid-engined. I’m going to exclude cars that went from front- to front-mid, like the Ford Mustang, in some configurations, or subtle shiftings that may take a car from rear- to barely rear-mid, like you could argue the Porsche 911 has. I’m looking for more dramatic location swaps. Also, it needs to be a production car, even if that production is limited. And the platforms, even if they’re extensively modified, need to at least have started out the same. All that make sense? With that in mind, let’s see what we can come up with.
The Kohlruss Steyr-VWs: So Close
In a lot of ways, these cars are perfect examples of what I’m talking about: a car that started life as a front-engined car, but ended up rear-engined. The problem is that often these were literally the same cars, because the Kohlruss Steyr-VWs were non-running Steyr 50 or 55 (nicknamed the Steyr Baby) models that, after WWII, were combined with leftover wartime VW Kübelwagens to become rear-engined. I wrote about these years ago, and while there were a number of different variations of this same idea made by various small coachbuilders, the most common seem to have come from Austrian coachbuilder Kohlruss, who took the Baby Steyrs that suffered from engine or gearbox failures – which was many, many of them – and stuck in whole drivetrains from Kubels, effectively transforming a front-engined car into a rear-engined one. But, while multiple ones were made, this was an aftermarket, desperation change, not real production. It’s conceptually what I’m thinking of, but unless it’s production, I can’t count it.
Do Dual Engines Count? The Citroën 2CV Sahara
This one is a little tricky, because while it definitely is a production (low volume, but whatever) car, and definitely was a front-engined car that was adapted to have a rear engine, the only time that rear engine layout was used was in the same car as the front engine. Yes, the 2CV Sahara is one of the only production twin-engined cars ever, so I’m not sure if this counts. I mean, maybe it does? Citroën absolutely did the engineering to install their air-cooled flat twin into the rear of the 2CV, and, hypothetically, they could have built a rear-engine/rear drive 2CV with a front trunk if they felt like it, but there wouldn’t have been much point to that. Getting four-wheel drive without having to engineer driveshafts or new gearboxes, though, that was what they were after, and the twin-engine solution did that. Still, I’m not sure if this counts, because the engine wasn’t moved, it got another instance in the same car, which feels different.
The One Who Did It: Renault
I think the only actual, people-could-have-bought-one examples of a model of car available with the engine in two different locations has to be Renault, with their Renault 5 and the Renault 5 Turbo versions starting from 1980 (one front-FWD economy car, the other a mid-RWD sports car) and then later they did the same basic idea with the two generations of Clio and Clio V6.
For both of these cars, even though the much more powerful mid-engine versions were heavily modified from their origins as a little FWD econobox, they crucially did at least start with the same platform and modify it to work with the mid-mounted engine location. Other similar rallycross-focused cars like the MG Metro 6R4 may look like the little shitboxes they derived from, but, in the case of the MG Metro 6R4, the whole car was built on a was a very racing-focused tube chassis that had nothing to do with the original car. How did it end up that Renault managed to pull this strange feat off when no other automakers had ever succeeded? Or, maybe more accurately, bothered? I think there’s two reasons Renault felt comfortable trying this. First, they had a bit of history with drivetrain flipping, as the same drivetrain that powered the old 1947-1961 Renault 4CV went on to power the later Renault 4 from 1961 to 1994, just driving the opposite wheels at the opposite end of the car.
I should mention that Volkswagen did something similar when they flipped their air-cooled flat four around 180° and put it in the front of the Brazilian VW Gol, so this kind of thing wasn’t unheard of, just not terribly common. And, Toyota stuck transverse fours from FWD hatchbacks into the middle of an MR2, GM did something similar with the Fiero, and so on. Still, Renault did it for their high-volume cars, so I think they had some comfort there. Next is the Renault 21, which came out in 1986, after the R5, but it’s another example of Renault’s unusual comfort with weird drivetrain variants in the same car, because this is one of the incredibly rare cars I can think of that came in a both transverse and longitudinal engine configuration at the same time. It was the Renault 18, which we got in the US as the Eagle Medallion.
The smaller 1.7-liter engine was installed transverse, and the larger 2-liter engine was installed longitudinally, both driving the front wheels. This isn’t the same as a whole location swap, but it’s weird, and I take it as proof that for whatever crazy Gallic reasons, Renault has been uniquely willing to make cars in engine layout variations that seem to make no sense to anyone else. I feel like I may be missing some other examples of the same models with completely different engine locations, so if you can think of any, let’s put them in the comments, so this page can become a bold and welcome resource for all weary wonderers thinking about this same, vitally important question. Fun fact, my dad uesed to own all the 4X4 Renault 18’s in Sweden. All Two. He later sold them and now they have been sold back to continental europe. https://www.losangemagazine.com/losange-magazine-issue-11-autumn-2020/renault-18-gtl-break-4×4-1984 It was available with the K20 which is a normal transverse engine as well as the D-series which is reverse rotation and backwards. I give you the Renault Espace…. and the Renault Espace F1. ( or going from the mostly underpowered front engined Monospace that defined Monospace as a car category to a mid engined monster that can only run on tracks ) https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Espace_F1 And there’s many instances of longitudinal/transverse engines in the French manufacturers… Since for a given car model you could have a 956cm3 engine and a 1.8 liter turbo…. with intermediate 1.2l, 1.4l, 1.6l versions ( and that’s not counting diesel versions ) Going O/T but still about French cars : I remember the day after I got my driving license, for whatever reasons my parents wanted me to fetch my grandmother from the train station… and I was to drive my father BX19GT(whatever… not sure it had a I or not) to perform that feat. To make sure my father took me early in the morning for a drive around the Charade Racetrack ( I let you google it… at that time it hadn’t been castrated and was still in it’s F1 glorious configuration and an open road )… Somewhere halfway in the straight between the pits and the Charade [golf] Curve…he said, quite calmly that I should check my speed… I was at 160Kmh and well the Curve was coming fast… but it didn’t seems so to my novice eyes. “the same drivetrain that powered the old 1947-1961 Renault 4CV went on to power the later Renault 4 from 1961 to 1994, just driving the opposite wheels at the opposite end of the car.” That drivetrain was only available in French-built base-model Quatrelles until 1986. Meanwhile in 1978 they had introduced the 1.1 C1E/688 engine (from the Cléon-Fonte family of engines) for top of the line GTL models, while the entry level TL got a smaller version of that engine a few years later to gradually replace the 845cc derived from the one in the 4CV in other markets. However, the C1E engine was an updated version of the Sierra engine, which was introduced in 1962 in another rear-engined car, the R8. Also, official production of the Renault 4 ended in 1992, not 1994; there’s rumours that production may have gone into early 93 – beyond the final 1000 “Bye-Bye”GTLs because they had left over parts at the Novo Mesto plant and there was still some demand (the last ones sold in Portugal were registered in 94, and we imported a very decent chunk of the ones built in the final 3-4 years). The Triumph 1500, one of the many beatufil Michelotti sedans, also switched from FWD to RWD, so they turned the engine 90 degrees. That must also count for moving the engine.
