This Fiat 500 Opened Wide For A Hayabusa Engine Transplant

What do you get when you have a Fiat 500 in need of an engine, and a spare Hayabusa engine lying around? Well, the result is a lot of screaming and tons of loud noises. Petrol Ped featured two Fiat 500s on their channel with part one dedicated to a Hayabusa-engined Fiat 500, and the second one with a Subaru-engined build of the same model. 

Of course, we’re all over part one of their two-part video features. Dubbed the “Fiabusa,” it’s far from its stock horsepower figures that were once somewhere in the ballpark of about 20 ponies. Heck, single-cylinders like Royal Enfield’s Himalayan 411 make more horses than the Fiat 500 initially did. It’s quite staggering to see just how far we’ve come, and just how crazy people are to put over 900 percent more power than the Fiat 500 was ever supposed to take. 

The Suzuki Hayabusa’s engine specs include 1,340ccs of displacement, with 197 horsepower. The video starts with a bunch of history lessons then we go on to the backside of the car and a few challenges that Hayabusa engine swappers face when putting the motor in a car. 

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As many of us will know, there is no reverse gear on a motorcycle, which means that something had to be done. On top of that, motorcycles use chain drives, something that some cars like the Radical builds around for its SR1, offering two options to customers, a chain drive or a dog box. To work around that, there is a Quaife gear drive transfer unit with a built-in limited-slip differential. To solve the issue of having no reverse gear, there is an actuator that is activated by a button on the dashboard that reverses the direction of the first gear—totally unlike most cars, but it works. 

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After that, we get a brief summary of the interior where we can see a Hayabusa’s instrument cluster, the gear lever with a quick shifter included for upshifts only, and also racing seats. It’s funny how the Hayabusa’s cluster fits so nicely in a car, which is also a testament to how big the bike really is. 

The Hayabusa engine redlines at 11,000 RPM, which is otherworldly for most cars, but a normal day for Hayabusa owners, or most bikes with four cylinders. The main con that comes with putting a bike engine in a car is that there is almost no torque in the lower RPM ranges, especially for the ‘Busa’s mill. It’s moving more than twice the weight plus two people in the car so the engine is a little strapped for torque. As Petrol Ped experienced, keeping it high in the rev range will reward the driver with power and tons of smiles while screaming down the road at not-very-fast speeds.

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