A Front-Engined, Twin-Turbo V8 Porsche 911 Sounds Like Sacrilege But Actually Works

The Porsche 911 is a sports car icon, revered for its dynamics, performance, usability, and expert craftsmanship. It also stands out from all of its competitors with a unique rear-mounted flat-six. Ditching this engine and instead mounting a V8 under the hood sounds like a recipe for disaster, but that’s exactly what one ambitious car builder in Australia has done.

This wild creation – officially badged the ShowTime Repco 933 – started out life as a 996-generation 911 before arriving in the workshop of Gary Reid. He’s an expert at building show cars and drift cars, and in creating a front-engined 911, built something that’d be absolutely perfect for the final Fast & Furious film.

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First is the engine. Gone is the 996’s original flat-six, and in its place sits one of GM’s 7.0-liter LSX V8s. That’s more than double the capacity of the original engine. Reid and his team could have called it a day with an off-the-shelf LS crate engine, but they didn’t.

Now mounted toward the front of the engine are a pair of massive Turbosmart turbochargers, and exhausts shooting flames directly out of the hood. Cramming this huge engine into the 911 required the team to create a new firewall, floor, and transmission tunnel. Despite all this, it still juts out several inches, meaning a massive hole had to be cut in the hood.

No standard Porsche 911 transmission can handle the grunt offered up by a twin-turbocharged V8, so Reid fitted an eight-speed transmission from Bentley, and added a sequential shifting function. All up, this insane 996 is rated at more than 1,200 hp. That’s not only far beyond any regular 911, but it’s up more than 200 hp over even a Porsche 918 Spyder with its fancy 4.6-liter plug-in hybrid powertrain. Unlike that hybrid hypercar, the 933 sends all its power exclusively through the rear wheels.

The changes go far beyond the powertrain. For example, a heavy-duty cooling system has been installed in the passenger compartment. The interior has also been overhauled with a custom dashboard that includes a new infotainment display, an aftermarket digital instrument cluster, and a multi-function Haltech steering wheel with buttons and toggles to make on-the-fly adjustments and change the drive mode.

Elsewhere, a set of carbon fiber Recaro seats has been installed, and there’s a bespoke transmission tunnel. It houses a carbon fiber sequential shifter and a hydraulic rear handbrake. Yep, this Porsche isn’t just designed for going fast in a straight line, as it’s also been designed to drift.

A bespoke body kit has also been hand-crafted for the car. It includes flared arches, a carbon fiber hood, and a huge rear wing with a Le Mans Prototype-inspired shark fin over the rear decklid. Rounding out the changes is a set of custom Rotiform wheels measuring 18×9.5 at the front and 18×10 at the rear.