Suzuki's diminutive Samurai off-roader has a cult following. For years, people have sworn by its off-road capabilities, even when most folks have full-size SUVs, trucks, or the new hotness that RideApart covers, UTVs. And it's easy to see why.
The Samurai was lightweight, agile, compact, and pretty damn bulletproof right out of the box when it was first introduced many decades ago. It's a proto-UTV in the same way that Tiktaalik was the proto-land animal—yes, I'm giving you deep evolutionary biology cuts.
But if there was one downside to the Samurai, it was probably its engine, in that it was often a wheezy, naturally aspirated, three-to-four cylinder engine. Basically, while the rest of the SUV was overengineered, the engine was a dog. Yet, what would happen if you changed that? No, I'm not talking about the lunatics who LS swap these things, though that happens, but what if you stayed within the Suzuki family? What happens when you go to an engine that's so ubiquitous and so powerful that nearly everyone knows of at least one build with it?
