Even in the early 1950s none other than Enzo Ferrari noticed that some of his nifty 250 series V-12's were getting dusted off by the likes of the low volume British Allard sports cars which were most often powered by large capacity V-8s primarily sourced from Cadillac or Chrysler.

Okay, I'll 'fess up before I go any further, being the fan of such transplants, with a fully engineered Jaguar Series 2 in the shed, with its 302 cu.in. V-8, Windsor XY donk and its Edelbrock/Holley 350 mated to a sturdy C-4 gear box hiding under the bonnet.

So it's pretty routine these days! But even back in the late 50s, according to no less an authority than Phillip Porter in his definitive tome 'Jaguar', our American cousins were beginning to notice that their 'foreign' favourites were getting left behind at the traffic lights by domestic sedans.... never a good look!

One young enthusiast, Warren 'Tanz' Tanzola (shades of the Fonz?) found a solution by getting a little more grunt from his ageing but much loved Jaguar XK120. The answer was to drop a 331 cu.in. Chrysler V-8 into the engine bay, mating this to a 3 speed Cadillac transmission fitted with a Oldsmobile clutch..... talk about 'crowded house'.

And with a bit of ingenuity, he managed to navigate the steering column around the engine/gearbox assembly with a little help from three universal joints.

Getting all the subsequent grunt to the road was always going to be a problem without a limited slip diff, but none the less for the day, he did achieve some pretty impressive results. Sixty mph from a smokey standing start,came up in a respectable 6.4 seconds, 60-80 mph took just 3.3 seconds, with the standing quarter mile coming up in 14.7 seconds, with the beastie shutting the gate at 97 mph.

Yeah, I know that a brace of electric cars will do better in this day and age, but I'm sure good ol' 'Tanz' had more fun... and I'm with him!