The controversy over engine swaps is never ending, and I am hearing it from many, many people. First of all, let me set the scenario for you, I am one of two owners of Bald Monkey Racing, we own another company that built the very first 2JZ S2000 in the world. Some of you are probably asking what is a 2JZ S2000, well it is a Honda S2000 with a Toyota Supra engine in it. Why did we build it, well first of all it had never been done before, and secondly we had built many high horse-powered Supra’s and we absolutely loved the Honda S2000. In our garage we had both, and while doing some work on the Honda one night we joked about having the horsepower of the Supra and the handling on the S2000, next thing you know after tons on engineering, fabricating, a bunch of money and 45 days later there it sat ready to start up, a 2001 Silverstone Honda S2000 with a Toyota engine and transmission. Somehow a few pictures got posted on the internet from a camera phone and our phone and email address’s started blowing up. How much, how long will it take, when can I get mine, yadda, yadda, yadda. We hadn’t even started the car yet, we got to thinking holy cow, and this is out of control. Next we got the car started, and decided to make a video about the car, we did and put it on youtube, we thought our email address’s and phone were blowing up initially, boy was I wrong, dead wrong. Within a week or so we were checking out some car forum boards and just couldn’t believe all the controversy, mostly in favor of the swap but lots of negative posts too. We bloated over all the good comments, but also read the bad ones too. There were posts like “The best swap EVER,” “You all build the baddest cars on the planet,” “How did you make the 2JZ fit in there,” and then there were the negative posts, like, “WHY,” “How could you kill the awesome handling of the S2k,” “You destroyed one of the best pieces of work ever,” and then we got one of the best neutral comments “Can you put the S2000 engine in the Supra,” boy did we laugh at that one. Since then we have built 5 2JZ S2000’s with different size Turbo’s, different parts and pieces, but we have recently outdone ourselves, we have built the first ever S2000 with an Automatic transmission, this one is out best yet. It has the 2JZ Supra engine in it, and is pushing over 900 horsepower, has a T-88 Turbo, tons of aftermarket parts, rims, stereo, and like I said an automatic transmission. The first ever Honda S2000 with and Automatic tranny, I rode in it for the first time last night and it is incredible. This thing rides like it came from the factory. This Yellow 2003 S2000 is a mutt, it has a Honda s2000 body, a Toyota Supra engine and transmission, a Nissan Skyline rearend, and a Nissan 300Z shifting module, and it works so great. You can see pics and videos of the 2JZ S2000’s in our forum board on www.racinsite.com. Now for a little more controversy, ready for this, we are swapping the same 2JZ engine into the Mazda RX-8, yeah you heard it here first. I have posted some pics of the engine in the RX-8 in our forum at http://www.racinsite.com, check them out. Well, not to toot our own horns but, now the Mazda forums are on fire, thanks to us. Same comments, “WHY,” “How could you kill the awesome handling of the RX8,” “You destroyed a great piece of work,” “How could you take out the rotary.” If you know anything about cars you will know that people either love or hate Rotary engine’s and that is what the Mazda RX-7 and RX-8’s have in them. We are not done with our first one yet, and we got a call next thing you know there are two in the driveway waiting for their new engines. This could blow up too. If you want to talk about controversy, wait til the Nissan community finds out what we have in store for them, they had better be ready, more to follow.