I have an admitted soft spot in my heart for wild motorcycle engine swaps, which you may have noticed by now. But before that, I loved a hot hatch. The tinier, the better; and while we're on the subject, one of the earliest legit automotive crushes I remember ever having was, in fact, a classic, pre-BMW Mini. As usual, I digress, when all I really want to tell you is that, of course, you should expect me to be the one to tell you about the Micrabusa.
It's the brainchild of UK-based YouTube channel NAWFABZ, from a dude named Nathan whose day job is fabricating beautiful custom exhausts (and in fact, he does that in the same workshop in which he builds his custom vehicles that he films for YouTube). Some time ago, he decided to take a Nissan Micra K11 (that's a second-gen Micra, from the late 1900s) and swap a Suzuki Hayabusa engine into it.
While the Micra is, indeed, a tiny little car that only weighed 1,400 pounds (give or take) from the factory, it's still more than slightly hilarious to see how tiny the Hayabusa engine looks as fitted under the bonnet. There's just so much room in that engine bay, you guys. Honestly, it's kind of mad.
There's more to it than just sticking that 'Busa engine up front and calling it a day, of course. Much, much more. Besides plenty of custom fabrication work that has to go into this job, there's also the small matter of recycling the 'Busa's fuel pump and mounting it in the rear-mounted, eBay-sourced fuel tank that Nathan is using for this build. And the not-at-all-small matter of stripping out the bits of the 'Busa's wiring loom that he no longer needs before extending the parts that he does need so that they'll be sufficient to fit the significantly larger dimensions of the Micra.
It might be a 47-ish minute video, but it's clear that hours of work went into getting as far as he gets by the end. And yes, you will get to hear it run; no worries, and I don't feel bad for spoiling it for you. It's not the final sound; as frequently happens when you get very excited and devoted to a project, there are a lot of things that aren't completely perfect, but that just need to be good enough to try to start the thing up for the first time. And there comes a point when you do need a clear win like that, because it's a great morale booster to keep you sufficiently psyched up to continue and finish the project.
Also of interest: Even though Nathan clearly has a well-appointed shop full of tools and equipment (not to mention knowledge and skill) at his disposal, he's still perfectly happy to make use of simple, effective solutions where they're warranted. Cardboard-aided design supplements the fancier computational CAD you might be expecting, and there is a legit point where he breaks out that old classic combo of a bench vise and a hammer to help in getting a bend in a seat-mounting plate just right.
Half the battle is knowing what tools to use where, and not overcomplicating things. Right? Right.
Anyway, while this project is by no means anywhere close to being done, it's clearly going to be a lot of fun to watch come together. And also hear, once that lightweight custom titanium exhaust is fully and properly mounted and flowing as intended.
