68 votes, not bad. I could imagine though, if it made it into the game, they’d probably give it an LS, a V12, and a diesel, swap. Or a 1.4L turbo rally swap. You could actually make a case for the LS.
The only engine swaps that wouldn’t want to tear this car in half would be a Porsche or Subie flat swap. I’ve seen an LSX conversion IRL, there isn’t much left of the original car other than the outer skin.
Checked on Google and there’s a bunch of V8 corvair swaps with it stuffed in the backend. Looked for rotarys and subaru swaps but came up pretty empty. Found a subaru swap to a mid engine. And a couple of front engine AWD swap jobs. But the majority of engine swaps seem to be V8s and VW engines.
There are a handful of pre-internet builds with these things where people have rendered them AWD with a drivetrain up front and one in the back, and one that is sitting on the frame of a GMC Jimmy lol
I would love a Corvair with two LS3/LT1’s driving each set of wheels, that is the kind of AWD I want
I can see the VW swap being popular, effectively being the same engine but more reliable and with a ton of aftermarket parts available. The Subie seems cost effective since there are a ton of non STI’s around. I perused the Corvair forums to see if anyone has mentioned a Porsche flat 6 swap, they seem to be worse than the Rennsport guys when it comes to “purity”. I guess the reason you don’t see flat 6 swaps more often is the relative cost of the parts for the flat 6 vs any other flat 4. V8 swaps just seem counter intuitive as you are pushing the center of gravity vertical in the car or you’re completely removing the rear seating to make it a mid mounted engine, still with a higher center of gravity.
No point in “power” without control…Today’s custom cars seem to have multi purpose usefulness in mind. Like that Fairlane posted in another thread, low slung, lots of handling parts as well as a big engine.
The Corvairs are all flat 6’s. This one is a factory turbo. As far as reliability I daily drove one 60 miles a day for 12 years and only had to replace oil, brakes and spark plugs etc.
Get this, we had a cattle ranch back in the early 70’s. And Dad picked up a 63’ (I believe anyway) Corvair rampside pickup. Yes, Corvair pickup. We actually got a full ton of hay on that puppy. We had to stack it cantilevered sticking out over the sides and on the roof of the cab. But it got the job done! I believe those were rated at 1/4 ton capacity. If they even had a rating.
I can’t get over how tiny the exhaust outlets are on these things – with the carburetor, you needed the thinner piping to keep pressure in them pipes given the engine sits right on top and doesn’t have far to go lol