Sunday, October 12, 2008

Swiss Race Taxi: Porsche 993 Turbo Powered VW Van

Car nuts have been stuffing Porsche engines into the back of VW vans since time immemorial. As a child, my friend R's parents had an eccentric German friend who had such a hybrid. I think the license plate even read "911 VAN". I thought it was absurd.

Race-Taxi is a Swiss project that shows what a few guys with a garage, three donor cars, and lots of spare time and disposable income can do.

Step 1: Find a donor van. Bonus points if it's a split window. (1962 model here.)


2. Find a donor Porsche engine. In this case, it's from a totaled 993 Turbo. Increase horsepower from 408 to over 500.


3. Find a chassis donor, in this case a Type 2 (T3), or Vanagon here in the States.


4. Remove the body from the chassis.


5. Widen and lengthen the bus by sawing it into quarters. Mate the body to the Porsche engine and T3 chassis.

6. Add a whole bunch of wires, Recaro seats, the Porsche's gauges, and a nifty wooden shift knob.


7. Lots of body work and paint.


8. Almost done.
9. Take it to the track and blow the doors off of Imprezas, Elises, and old M3s.



CKY

4 comments:

Blogger said...

Reminds me of an even better engineering project combining VW with Porsche: this Karmann Ghia built by Bader Racing. There are some awesome video's on their site:

http://www.bader-racing.de/de/home/home_aktuelles.htm

Best to you!

Maxichamp said...

Holy cow! That is MUCH quicker than the stock Karmann Ghia.

Anonymous said...

Looks to me like it could be even faster with better suspension.

Man of La Mancha said...

Fantastic job and I am totally fascinated. One question, why use a Type3 chassis? Cause it's different from the type 1 or 2?