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The GKN Lotus 47D was built in 1968 by Lotus and the GKN Group as a development vehicle for GKN products. The car used a much modified Lotus Type 47 chassis and body - the 47 was the race only version of the Europa. The interior was finished to a very high standard and the car was fitted with a 3.5 litre Rover V8 engine and ZF 5 speed transaxle. Once early development work had been completed, the engine was modified by Vandervell (a GKN group Company and former builder of Vanwall F1 cars) to the following specification: 4.4 litre (60 thou stroker crank and 62 thou overbore), custom inlet manifold with four twin choke weber carbs and 296bhp at 6,500 rpm.
The car was registered and extensively tested on British roads by many magazines and Autocar obtained the following figures: 0-60mph 5 seconds, 0-100mph 11.1 seconds, top speed 162mph (180mph was available with alternative gearing). At the time it was the fastest accelerating road legal car that Autocar had tested - faster even than the Lamborghini Miura and Ferrari Daytona which had engines of a similar size and power.
After the success of this project GKN built another even more spectacular development car - the Jensen FF based and Chrysler Hemi powered GKN FFF100 which in 1972 went on to capture the world 0-100mph and 0-100-0mph records for a road legal car - You can vote for that car by clicking the following link:
https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/threads/gkn-fff100-1972-acceleration-record-holder.301053/
The following link is to an excerpt from a book which tells the detailed story of the car prior to enlargement and development of the engine by Vandervell.
http://47d.org/47d/might.html
