You know, when you think about what engine you might want to wedge under the hood of your home built hot rod, kit car, or what have you, there are a couple of staples that will always come to mind. The first is most likely a Chevy V8, either in old school SBC form or more modern LS-something variety. It’s almost a no brainer. Should you be attempting to boost the performance of a go kart or  small kitchen appliance, it’s usually Suzuki’s atom bomb of a bike motor the ‘Busa’ that’d be your go-to. 

But what about the unsung heroes of the performance-boosting world? Sure, if you’re more a Ford man than a Chevy fan, or have Mopar on your mind, you might go with one of the Blue Oval’s thin-wall FE engines, or the tried and true Chrysler LA. But what if you’re really looking for something that’s both really obscure and obscenely fast, what would you choose?

There’s more than a century of internal combustion engine history to peruse, and over  that time pretty much everyone has tried to make whatever they happened to have go faster. That means there’s an almost endless supply of performance engine options from which to choose. Some -as we’ve already noted – are like the George Clooneys of performance, the standard bearers that while assuredly competent offer little surprise. If you were looking for something both rocking and, by its unexpected choice, shocking, what would you choose? What do you think is the most underrated performance-upgrade engine?

Image: [cordhaven]