Can You Run A Car With The Propshaft Connected Directly To The Engine?

The Regera is perhaps Koenigsegg’s most interesting car. It does away with a gearbox entirely, using instead a fascinating and extremely complicated direct-drive system which involves a clever hydraulic coupling and several electric motors.

What Garage54 has done here is kind of similar. Only it involves an old Lada. And it’s mostly for fun.

Those bonkers Russian mechanics decided to take out the car’s gearbox and mount the propshaft directly to the engine. Well, not quite - the bell housing, part of the casing and the input shaft were all retained, with a pipe added to bridge the gap where the cogs used to be.

Could such a bodged setup ever work? We don’t want to spoil the ending, but let’s say it doesn’t go so well. There is, after all, a reason your car has gears…