Car appreciation... the aesthetics, the engineering, etc

I must say I’ve been curious about all this ‘we’ and ‘our’ stuff. I thought you were chucking gold ingots at the bloke and he was building you an inappropriately awesome engine. Have you also bought shares in his business, in some sort of stroke of man-maths genius manoeuvre reminiscent of frozen orange juice futures?

Nothing so official, really speaking.

Initially I planned on a prophylactic rebuild of my engine as they can be pretty kippered by 100,000 miles - and was going to take the opportunity to resolve the common failure points at the same time. Sensible, I thought - spending a little now to avoid spending a lot later.

Then it became apparent that one could rebuild to 3.7 litres for a small additional outlay - and that seemed reasonable.

Looking at the experience of another chap who'd gone this route it became apparent that it would result in more torque, a similar peak power, but said peak delivered earlier in the rev range. Very sensible, and very suitable for, say, a people carrier engine.

At this point I started talking to Mike the engine builder, and the goal was to keep the sports-car character of the engine by pulling strongly to the redline, rather than lot of low down thump and then getting off at Fratton.

I sourced some heads, they went off to Mike and he started investigating them on his flow bench.

In the meantime I started chatting to a fellow called Martin, and the conversation at some point turned to the engine project that I had on the go. Martin was interested, so we started discussing the situation, and that lead to Martin deciding to build an engine as well for his 911 (which then developed into him building two).

In the background Mike was beavering away, and Martin and I kept on researching and coming up with ideas, discarding some and continuing others - the billet tappet chest, made by a machining place recommended by Richard Brunning, the new oil pumps, the pistons, the cams, the ITB's. As we went along we shared this all with Mike.

A few months ago Mike finalised the heads, and I paid him - I think it was just over three and a half grand. He said that he'd like to remain in the group of three, but rather than being paid per hour or per task he'd like to contribute toward the project as a whole and we'd work out how to share any profits if we ever made some.

So essentially there are three of us now, one world championship winning engine designer, one owner of a motorsports company, and me, with a fairly decent amount of IP, a bunch of prototype parts and three engines under development.

It's been really interesting so far, and we've a distance to go yet. It's going to be pivotal running the first engine up on the dyno - we will literally find out whether we're idiots over the course of a few minutes. We hope we're not - but this is one of those things you have to establish empirically.

If we're not idiots and we do have an upgrade path for a very common, very cheap engine that is available in a very plentiful and very accomplished sportscar then we think there's a commercial aspect to be explored - the kind-of fourth member of our group owns a business that does nothing but rebuild these engines, and thinks that there is a market.

If I were to buy the GT3 linked upthread it would be 60k, and any tinkering with it would likely devalue it.

If I were to buy the purple car linked upthread and throw some parts at it I'd (if we're not idiots) have a faster, more capable car than the GT3 for 2/3rds of the price, built exactly as I wanted.

This will go straight to the GC thread, but the 10k 996 is a staggering bargain when you consider just how close it is to being a GT3, the major difference is really the engine. Our engines won't cost 50k.