alternative to six-ing it up..., turbo + waterboxer ??? Options

[dtravni]

hello, 914-ers - i'm sure this is not a new topic - the problem is that i'm new to 914club. anyways, here goes.

my son & i bought a pretty nice 'california car' coupla years ago & we're debating pros/cons of pushing in a 911 6 - not exactly a glide (& not exactly cheap, either). it seems to me that a worthy alternative might be
a 2 (or 2.1) 4 cylinder watercooled Vanagan engine (waterboxer) -
all things considered, a better alternative. in fact, if the aircooled 914 4
could take the thermal loading, adapting a turbo in IT would be even better. i'm of the opinion that the performance would be comparable to a
2.7+ 6, and a whole lot more agreeable in the installation (transmission, motor mounts, cabling, etc). the plumbing (exhaust, intake, & cooling seem to be more straightforward too, compared to the adaptation required for the 6-er).

i'm sure that there are some out there that have considered/done this
installation - i'd be most interested in hearing your advice & tales of joy/woe.

[Matt Monson]

Well,
Many a Vanagon owner has pulled that engine out to replace it with an EJ22E from a Subaru, if that is indication of how people think about the factory VW engine. If you are going to go with any wasser-boxer, a Subaru power plant is the way to go, especially if you want to boost it. There are plenty of factory built low compression turbo engines out there.

But the longer I am around this community, the more the purist in me takes over. As such, I am starting to feel that it is a travesty to put anything but a Porsche powerplant in my own car. But a lot of that depends on originality and uniqueness. I have a '74 2.0l with appearance group that seems to just go up in value as it sits in my garage on jackstands. If I had, say something like a '75 1.8l, there would be a Subaru swap in there by Christmas...

If the options are 6 conversion or Vanagon engine, I vote 6...