The Banshee .604 racing engine (as it was designated) was produced beginning in 1945 by George Barrett of London, Ontario, Canada. It represented domestic competition to Canada's only other classic commercial racing engine, the Monarch 600 from not-too-distant Scarborough, Ontario.

The Banshee was a basically typical North American big-bore racing engine of its day, featuring disc rear rotary valve (RRV) induction allied to cross-flow loop scavenging, a lapped baffle piston, a sturdy automotive-style timer and a healthy compression ratio of 10:1. Its major departure from the established racing engine "formula" was its use of a single ball-race on the shaft instead of the more usual twin ball-races. Despite its advertised displacement of 0.604 cuin. (9.90 cc), its true displacement was 0.638 cuin. (10.45 cc), taking advantage of the fact that many forms of big-bore competition allowed powerplants of up to 0.649 cuin. (10.64 cc) at the time.

Two distinct minor variants of the Banshee, the B45 and B46 models, were produced by George Barrett in very small numbers between 1945 and 1949. During that period, it's doubtful that as many as 50 examples were manufactured in total. However, the B46 variant later made a very unusual re-appearance in 1987, being reproduced by its original manufacturer George Barrett as a "collector's re-issue". It's not know how many such reproductions were completed and sold, but the number cannot have been been large - the engine is very rare today.

A detailed review of the Banshee will appear on this website in due course.