With due apologies to the New Zealand tourism board, if you want the full Lord of the Rings experience, you don’t need to go very far. Ten minutes outside Westport, the mountains are spectacularly misty as we pull up on a quiet hillside. All around is Shire-like; green and pleasant but down amid the trees there is a growling, snarling noise that bespeaks a monster.
Ben Shakal, a native of Wisconsin, established Knine 10 years ago in Mayo. Why would anyone set up a company making off-road racing trucks, primarily for sale in the United States, in the misty, rainy west? “The truth is, it was almost entirely accidental,” says Shakal. “If you’d asked me from a business standpoint, could we build something like this in Ireland, I would probably have told you no – that’s probably a terrible idea. But, piece by piece, it just kind of came together.
In spite of the chunky, square bonnet, the Knine is actually mid-engined. This one is running a tiny Rotax 1.0-litre turbo, three-cylinder engine. Suitably tuned and running on E85 bio-ethanol fuel, this dinky little engine can produce as much as 400hp, but for today’s purposes, and running on standard unleaded, it’s pumping out a more sedate 220hp. Still, that’s plenty in a car that weighs just 1,175kg.The Knine uses a Sabelt racing wheel.
Inside is a racer’s cockpit. Two high-backed Recaro bucket seats with four-point racing harnesses, a tiny digital display flanked by a couple of simple gauges, a large LCD screen in the centre which isn’t for the infotainment system but for the rear-view camera, and a controller for the headsets. These, with integral microphones, are necessary because the Knine gets noisy inside.