Take a look at Matt Panic’s 1973 Toyota. Under the hood is Toyota’s famed BEAMS engine from the 2000s, the last evolution of a long line of little twin-cam four-cylinders. What makes Mark’s interesting is that it has so much intake noise it sounds like it could ingest a nearby horse.
More and more old, light, reasonably modern rear-wheel-drive cars on the used market are ending up trashed, crashed, and rusted out. What is a car enthusiast to do? Convert a different old, light reasonably modern front-wheel-drive car to shred at the back.
Everyone mythologizes the sounds of vintage sports cars of the 1960s and back, that their engines had some ineffable qualities that modern ones can’t match. But this guy stuffed a modernized Ferrari engine into his Dino and it sounds incredible.
We thought Mark Sawatsky had the engine swap of the century when he fit a Jaguar V12 into an MGB GT. Only problem: it didn’t really work, and then that lovely V12 died. So he did what any sensible person would do: hacked the roof off, added a Buick turbo four-cylinder, designed a new tube frame and suspension, and…
Kyle Long’s 1966 Volvo 122S wagon would be cool enough on its own, given that he swapped in the more modern five-cylinder engine from a 1995 Volvo 850. The week after finishing it, he took his freshly swapped wagon on a 7,000-mile cross-country road trip, where he’s well on his way to legendary status after already…
Ben Beacock’s 1981 Volkswagen Scirocco had one slight problem: its engine was toast. So, he swapped it for the beloved 24-valve VR6 engine, and fabricated a ton of custom parts to move the engine to the middle—yes, the middle—of the car. It’s perhaps the most complicated fix to a relatively simple problem, and I…
One of the fastest cars in the world at the moment is a Chevrolet Corvette with a V6 under the hood. Which V6, I wondered, like so many of you at this very moment. As it turns out, it’s a unique one, one with a bit of story behind it.
The Nissan RB straight-six is one of the most desirable engines of all time, and America’s Gran Turismo generation fights to get parts for these forbidden fruit motors. That’s what makes Dillon Merkl’s Skyline-powered 1962 Ford Falcon so funny, since he basically it built out of spares and parts other people were…
Minis! They’re fun cars, but please miss me with that British kitsch—they’re BMWs now and we all know it. So, why not stuff a BMW V8 in the front?
“What in the hell?” That was 24 Hours of Lemons race organizer and ex-Corvette Magazine writer Nick Pon’s reaction after the series’ first C3-generation Corvette popped its freshly repainted, Warsteiner-liveried hood. Inside was the BMW M50B25 inline-six engine out of an E34 BMW 5 Series. Surprise!
Can your Honda Accord go from 0 to 60 mph in 2.7 seconds? Jim Belosic’s can. Belosic turned a car that he bought as a replica of his high school ride into a rear-wheel-drive Gasser-style electric car using drivetrain bits from a Tesla Model S P85. He calls this roughly 536-horsepower frankencar the Teslonda, and…
What have you been working on lately? We’re bringing back Build of the Week, and we want to feature the most fascinating projects out there in the process: wild engine swaps, show cars, race cars, rare cars, and even meticulously well-preserved regular cars no one else has the guts to love. To kick it off, we’d love…
The Ferrari LaFerrari hypercar has always been a lovely car with a profoundly dumb name, but I often like to fantasize about which other cars would be improved by its 6.3-liter hybrid V12 engine. Would it fit under the hood of a Porsche 924? That’s worth finding out, because a LaFerrari engine with just 20 miles on…
The humble Up! is VW’s little city car. So of course you need to stuff the largest engine you can into its front, which as JP Performance did, would be a 1.8-liter turbocharged Audi TT engine. We need it.
Are you there, God? It’s me, Stef. I don’t ask for much, but I just picked up a weird rare Volkswagen race car and its humble flat-four engine is woefully broken. All I need to do is find €10,000 and I can replace it with a Mugen-Honda MF-351 V10 from a Formula One car that’s up for sale on Race Cars Direct right…
