A post-war racer from Allan L:Solved! 1955 Kieft GP

[Allan L]

This 1950s racing car is fairly obscure, but has a very interesting engine and is alive and well. Name the make and engine make/type if you can.

[Allan L]

Lots of viewings, but no answers.
D'you want another photo, or shall I move it to Expert?

[Ultra]

Give it a little longer as a Rookie, please. Couple of days or so.  I just put it on the front page of the site.

[Allan L]

Another photo, then:

[D-type]

"Godiva was a lady who through Coventry did ride
Showing all the villagers her lovely lily-white hide
The only ones to notice that she road upon a horse...
... were the bleary eyed surveyor and the engineer of course"

The car is the '1955' Kieft Grand Prix car.  Powered by a Coventry Climax FPE or 'Godiva' V8 engine.

Kieft designed the car to use the Coventry Climax 'Godiva' engine and got as far as a rolling chassis.  Coventry Climax developed the 'Godiva' or FPE engine to the pre-production prototype stage but its performance did not approach the quoted performance of the Continental manufacturers so they scrapped it.  Many years later one of the Godiva prototype engines was put into the chassis and a car was built up.  The car first raced in historic events in 2002.

[Allan L]

Quite right.
It would be interesting to compare horsepower of the Godiva with that of the contemporary Ferrari, Maserati and Mercédès-Benz motors on the same dynamometer.

The other revisitation of its history would be to build a Connaught J3, a rear-engined car also dropped when Coventry Climax withdrew the Godiva.