Plausible Corporate Mix N' Match Cars

[Eunos_Cosmo]

I recently drove a rented Honda Odyssey (black edition) with 6 people from Toronto to Montreal. It was fantastic, one of the best long-distance cars I've ever experienced. Ultra comfortable, quiet, and effortless for everyone including the third row and yet shockingly entertaining to drive. It made me think - what if Acura did a version of this car with the 3.0L TT V6 from the MDX/TLX (RIP) Type S with SH-AWD* and the more premium Acura interior. It would be perhaps the best people-carriers the industry has ever known, and all of the parts are right there. It could be done.

*Admittedly, the SH-AWD system could likely not go straight into the Odyssey platform as the rear suspension design is different and I'm not sure there is a driveshaft tunnel, but I maintain it's plausible.

So that got me thinking, what are some OTHER plausible mashups that could be done using compatible platforms/engines/drivetrains to make cool/interesting products that don't exist. This could be historical, but lets try to keep the level of plausibility high rather than pure fantasy.

For instance, the NC-generation MX-5 and the RX-8 shared a platform and the 2.0L, 2.5L, and 2.3L-T MZR engines were basically the same apart from the block. Without significant engineering hurdles, Mazda could have built an MX-8 with the 260hp 2.3L turbo MZR from the Mazdaspeed 3. Equally, they could have built an RX-5 with the 13B Renesis engine as a rotary roadster. The funny thing is that I think both hypothetical cars might have been better/more interesting than what Mazda actually sold us. (From what the aftermarket/tuning community has done a 2.5L turbo MZR engine with 300hp would have also been pretty plausible).

 

[VXR]

The MX8 actually sounds like it would be amazing.

 

[Greycap]

Being the resident RWD Volvo guy here, there was a lot of unused potential in the redblock engine. Everything imaginable has been done to death by the community since, but still. Why wasn't it factory built? Let's see.

B230FT: The run of the mill late turbo version. 2.3l displacement and a not so well flowing 8V head with a mild cam, 165 bhp or so.
B234F: A pretty rare 16V NA version. Again 2.3l but with indeed a 16V head, 155 bhp or so.
B204FT: An Italy (and some other markets) special turbo version. 2.0l displacement with the 16V head, 185 bhp or so.

Well you can see where this is going. Take the 2.3l bottom end, bolt the 16V head on it and add a turbo. 200+ bhp pretty much guaranteed with off the shelf parts, save for perhaps different pistons for lower compression than the NA version. And we're still not talking about the...

AQ151: Branded as Penta, a NA boat engine, but it's still a redblock. 2.5l displacement with an improved 8V head which was also used in some NA car engines, 145 bhp or so.
AQ171: Here it gets interesting. 2.5l displacement with a 16V head, 165 bhp or so.

So it's entirely possible to take the Penta crankshaft (only a stroke difference between the 2.3l and 2.5l) and connecting rods, drop them into a B230 block, and finish it off with a 16V head and a very slightly bigger turbo from a whiteblock for enough flow. Call it a B254FT. Probably in the vicinity of 230 bhp judging by the B204FT, all factory parts without even a boost increase, and that would already have been a very respectable figure for a family car in the mid to late nineties.

Taking it just a bit further, the late B230FT engines had an option called Turbo+ that increased the boost from ~0.6 bar to ~0.8 bar, and the maximum power from 165 bhp to 180 bhp. The normal 8V head is such a bottleneck at high RPM ranges that the number difference isn't big but apply it to the build above and it'd be close to 250 bhp, we could have had a 940R to accompany the 850R as an RWD alternative.