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2002 photography by Patrick Stevenson, Bavaria photography by Andrew Golseth, Range Rover photography by Daniel Piker, 912 photography by Ian Wood
“Hillclimb specials” have benefited from some weird and wonderful marriages of motor and chassis for some time now (look up a certain Fiat X1/9 and a Judd-powered M3 if YouTube isn’t blocked in your office), and the swaths of pushrod V8 GMWs and LSX-7s popping hoods at Cars & Coffees only seem to be expanding the population of cars powered by heart transplants in the last few years, but let’s get a little hypothetical and pretend we have access to the machinery and bank accounts that we see in dreams; imagine a Matra V12 stuffed into a BMW M1, for instance. Perhaps a 917/30’s turbo flat-twelve matched in unholy union with a carved-up 914.
Obviously some combinations won’t fly in any stretch of the practical world, but let’s just say you have a team of engineers who like helping you modify frame rails on their days off from their NASA contractor’s gig. What would you put into what? And better yet, if you have an inkling of it might feasibly be done, please don’t be shy in sharing some of your keyboard speculations.
I can’t believe I missed this one, this is my favorite subject. I tend to look at engine swaps a little differently , however. Ultimate power and speed aren’t what I’m after. Rather, useable power and efficiency combined with some degree of style and utility. Some favorites I’ve seen are:
Volvo 240 wagon w/ 200hp VW TDI engine
Volvo 122 wagon w/ BMW E30 chassis and M20 engine
Cortina wagon w/Lotus engine and suspension
and of course
Porsche 912 w/Subaru engine (hell, I wouldn’t evenneed the Turbo!)
Some others I’d like to try
Vega wagon w/Ecotec
Mk1 Capri w/Ecoboost
Corvair w/Subaru
And on and on and on……..
I have three considerations. First would be to find an amg hammer coupe or maybe an even older benz and swap a manual trans and a supercharged 55 motor and handling upgrades. The other idea is to take a hudson hornet and put either an s52 or a 55 in it. Lastly if I could I would buy back my corvair that was my first vintage car and swap a porsche flat six in
I dream of one day building a Mercedes (c124) 300CE AMG Hammer coupe replica/tribute with the 6.2 l v8 from the 63 AMG-models (M156). I think the wide body AMG-styling looks stunning, and I really like that engine. If the budget is sufficiently large, I would even swap the entire floor with everything from a newer car, like Piper Motorsport has done with a 190E EVO replica/tribute.
In the late-1970s I owned an Austin-Healey 3000 Mark III (BJ8, the model’s final iteration). The engine was very tired, however. I was renting a London house from a director of the company that owned the BMW distribution franchise for the UK. We discussed the possibility of putting a modern BMW 3.0-litre six and gearbox into the Healey, and were close to getting agreement up the line for a free engine to demonstrate ‘what if’. Then my landlord jumped ship to take another job, and the project inevitably died without his ‘sponsorship’.
My lottery-win Q-car would be a Citroen 2CV van body welded onto a crashed/rolled Porsche 911. I would keep the original cement-mixer engine in the front, unconnected, to both provide ballast and go endearingly ‘pocketa-pocketa-pocketa’ at traffic lights before launching furiously at the horizon.
And what about the glorious Lancia Thema 8:32? That was a brilliantly bonkers initiative.
Aston Martin 5.3L V12, one of the later variants from the DB9. Slap that son of a gun in to a Series III Jaguar XKE 2+2.
It’d need a six speed too, but a conventional one mounted behind the engine, not a rear mounted transaxle.
It’d need the requisite big brakes and uprated suspension, but I’d want it to look as stock as humanly possible from the outside.
Alternate: Fox Body Mustang Pace Car Edition with a 2.3 Ecoboost, 6-Speed, and built suspension. An Uber-SVO if you will.
Recently I was thinking about a cool engine for the rather slow VW sp2 1.7 flat 4 and the 917/30’s turbo flat-twelve you mentioned would be pretty amazing but if you want to be more conservative a period correct flat six 911 2.7 engine would be perfect!
from my visit to Brazil, I fall in love with those cars in the future if I have the money I want to bring one of these to Colombia.
My mistake, sorry for my last comment, by reading your comment in a hurry I understood it incorrectly, I was assuming the “Polo” word in another context…. I just didn’t know about the Polo Porsche Flat fours website until now.
And yes you you’re right but I was exaggerating with these engines especially with the Flat twelve… these Polo engines look like a perfect fit without doing much extra work, I will keep an eye on the Polo website thanks for pointing this on me.
And by the way is “Bato” not “Vato” (atleast in the correct use of Spanish)