really scary engineering

[lrickert at covad.net]

As it is Halloween I have been thinking about a rather frightening project,
namely building a longitudinal mid engine awd rally car. Something more or less
like a Peugeot 205 T16. This particular drivetrain configuration is, to put it
mildly, difficult to execute in a home modified vehicle. Other than a couple of
minivans there are no mid engine awd vehicles in the US I can discover.
Presumably some of the aftermarket transaxle makers have something which would
do the job, but that sort of approach isn’t an option. I think it can be done
with a combination of various drive system parts, some mild modification and a
bit of creativity. Right now I have been thinking about using a fwd transverse
transaxle (golf, TT, eclipse . . .) rotated 90 degrees and placed behind the
driver. It would somehow have to be made to work using the axle flanges to turn
drive shafts going to the front and rear differentials.  The main obvious
problem with this is gearing, the drive shafts coming out of the transaxle turn
at a normal final drive ratio ~4:1 running that through another set of diff’s is
going to result in totally unworkable gearing for any motor sort of a turbine (~
16:1?)

I realize such a project is crazy, unjustified by even the ideal result and
hugely difficult to accomplish, but is just sounds like fun to me.   Any ideas
or suggestions? Does anyone know how the Group B cars did this? I would guess
they had gearboxes and diffs made for them but maybe they found a simple more
elegant solution.


thanks

Luke