Nerd’s Eye View: Alex Kelsey’s MC2 Rally Car
Khiem Dinh is an engineer for Honeywell Turbo Technologies at the time of this writing. All statements and opinions expressed by Khiem Dinh are solely those of Khiem Dinh and not reflective of Honeywell Turbo Technologies.
Enter Alex Kelsey and his MC2 (Mad Creation 2). At the time of his creation of MC2, Alex was only 21, so he probably didn’t know any better about any said heritage. The car was built in his garage in New Zealand and it is freakin’ awesome. Being a bit of a garage build, a fair amount of bargain shopping was done.
So where does one start in the creation of one’s obscene dream of a rally car? Alex started with a Peugeot rally-cross body over a tube chassis. Because you’re building the car however you damn well please, you make it mid-engine of course.
To power your car, you’d use a Renault Formula 3.5L V6 engine making over 500hp. This is an older generation engine which is obsolete in current Formula Renault, so it was bought for a good deal as it was just sitting collecting dust.
Air is fed to the engine from the roof scoop. The three holes seen under the scoop divert some of the incoming air to the passenger compartment.
Here you can see the carbon fiber duct going from the roof to the rear wall of the passenger compartment. You can also see the two air vents to direct air to the driver and navigator.
That duct in the passenger compartment feeds this big air box for the engine. The air box and chassis were competing for the same space, so an indentation was made in the air box. You can also see the air box is two halves to allow for installation with the latch to hold them together.
