We're Putting a Honda Engine in This Porsche with Big Dreams and a Small Budget
I always appreciate the artistry of ultra high-end hot rods, like the Porsches that come out of Singer's garage or old Land Cruisers that have been remade by Icon 4×4. But I'm more impressed when people do interesting builds with tight budgets and modest workshops. Take my buddy Tom here—he was engine-swapping a Porsche with Honda power in the back corner of some shop parking lot, outside, in February, in New Jersey. And he's currently doing a great job documenting the project and his pain for our amusement on The Drive 's YouTube channel.
I met Tom something like 18 months ago. We were buzzing around the New York-New Jersey border getting rolling shots of a Lamborghini Huracan Sterrato. I was quickly intrigued by his casual confidence… and quick willingness to hang himself out the back of my BMW to get the images he wanted. 'Dude's a bit of a gangster,' I thought to myself as he operated our makeshift camera turret. I now find myself making the same comment as I'm watching Tom shovel snow and doing open-engine work out in the elements.
As you'll see in the intro video to this new series, Tom was our main man behind the CARISMA video series we ran for the last couple of years. He found a lot of very interesting builds and did a great job capturing the people behind them. (Check it out if you haven't!) Now he's got a build of his own going, and we thought it'd only be right to let him tell the story of how he's putting a Honda K-Series engine into his Porsche 944 after its original engine went kaput .
We're doing our best to make sure these videos are interesting to both car nerds and casual watchers. Don't expect a comprehensive how-to tutorial, but if you've never swapped an engine yourself, you might learn a thing or two if you come along for the journey.
The first real update is already live, and another episode will drop this week. You know the routine: Watch, like, subscribe, and share these around if you like what you see!
I'm stoked to have more grassroots-level wrenching on our YouTube channel and homepage. This is the kind of stuff that gets me motivated to get off my butt and start fixing the 99 problems my own fleet of project cars has. If Tom can do it in a frozen back lot, I think I'm all out of excuses with my two-bay heated garage!
Working on any projects like this yourself? Tell us about it at tips@thedrive.com.
Pro car critic since 2012. Andrew's also been an off-road tour guide, repo man, and Baja co-driver, among other things. Lifetime car nerd, amateur tinkerer, very slow casual racer.
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