The Hoonigan folks are a little on the crazy side with some of their builds. If you’ve watched any videos they’ve produced, they have some monster high-horsepower cars with wide bodies and giant wheels. Often, the end result is almost a caricature of the car it is based upon. In this instance, however, the car itself looks rather subdued. Yes, this 911 has an RSR-style front bumper, it has wide flares, and the rear decklid has a big wing on it, but as a performance build these days it looks rather subdued. When you open the decklid, however, everything changes.
Under that giant wing on the decklid is hidden a beast from the East, Honda’s venerable K20. Already an excellent performance engine in its own right, when it’s modified with 10.5:1 compression, “stage 3” cams, and a Garrett GTX3076 turbocharger, the fun quotient only increases. This dare-to-be-different mentality might be taken too far with this engine swap, however. While it probably is less expensive to make big power with a turbocharged Honda engine, does it take away some of what makes a 911 great? I would argue that it does. The 911’s original flat-six sits low in the engine compartment, and the power delivery is wildly different from a peaky big-turbo four cylinder.
I’m not one to judge, as I think everyone should be able to build the car they want to drive. If this 911’s owner is looking for inexpensive and reliable power, there are far worse engines they could have started with. It’s certainly not my cup of tea, but the car appears to be well crafted and uses excellent quality parts. Case in point, a full Elephant Racing “GT3” front suspension setup with full remote reservoir coil-overs. That’s nearly as impressive as the car’s use of 2008 Cayman S brakes on all four corners. There is no question that this car will perform better than it did from the factory in every metric, but at what cost?
[Source: Hoonigan Facebook Page and Because Daddy on YouTube]
