Mann made machine

Meet the Mannic Beattie, a homemade shed build complete with an auxiliary jet engine

- JASON BARLOW

Nic Mann hands me a turbine blade. This, he says with a gleam in his eye, was originally part of the Rolls-Royce Olympus 593 turbojet that powered Concorde. Nic worked on that fearsome engine during his time at the aerospace giant in the 1970s, and remains transfixed by turbines. So much so that he’s used one to circumvent the lag in his hillclimb special, the Mannic Beattie. Except that ‘special’ doesn’t even get close to describing this thing. Nic is supremely modest but his creation is close in spirit and execution to an F1 car. The kicker is, he designed, engineered and built it in his Berkshire garage for about £20k.

A beloved statesman of the hillclimb scene, Nic transformed his mother's Morris Minor in phases until it was running a turbocharged Rover V8 with throttle modulated nitrous injection to the tune of about 550bhp. It was hooked up to a Jaguar XJ6 driveline and its torque outputs would regularly overwhelm the gearbox. Nic ran a 30.07secs up Shelsley Walsh in the Moggie in 1986, only half a second slower than World Rally champion Hannu Mikkola in a works Audi Sport Quattro.