Some cars appear more frequently on YouTube and social media as modified rockets than others. But with skill, can’t you put any engine or any other part into any car?
Actually, if trying to maximize performance, why not build from scratch? Why is “1,800hp GTR” more interesting or common than “1,800hp car built in garage”?
In: Engineering
You can do anything with anything – but some cars are just more popular for various reasons which could be:
* They are sporty to start with, for example homologation specials for motorsports (Nissan Skyline being a classic example) or just a range of cars that includes fast variants at the top of the range but people can buy the base model cheaply and then add parts. BMW for example sell absolutely poverty-spec versions of most of their cars for fleet buyers but the same model runs all the way up to the M sports versions which are truly awesome. Although it may not be totally straightforward, transplanting parts from the sporty one into a lower model is usually much easier than anything custom.
* They are popular – any car that has a large user base will likely have some folks who are modifying them because people will modify whatever they’ve got. Once a few people start modding one model, people start making more stuff for them and it develops from there.
* They have potential – the original Mini was supposed to be a small cheap car for the people but John Cooper saw the potential in them for racing and the rest is history.
* They’re just cool – some cars look cool or are generally fun and people will love them & modify them. See the original VW beetle & camper
* They share parts with faster models – sometimes a car manufacturer will share parts across the range (EG engines, drivetrain, suspensions) to save costs, which means a “slow” model might have the same basic parts as a much sportier model but (for example) much softer suspension and various cheaper parts on the engine that are designed for economy not outright power. So you might have the same basic engine block and a few other bits and be able to swap a load of parts across from a sporty model. Again, much easier/cheaper than a load of custom stuff.
* Video games or movies make them popular: DeLoreans are (literally) the shining example of this, they were by all accounts not great cars, they were slow and expensive although they did look kinda cool, no-one really cared much about them until Back To The Future came out. Without that movie they’d likely be about as popular as the Triumph TR7 is these days. I’ve also heard it said that Ferrari f**ed up massively by not licencing their cars for Grand Turismo when that came out, so you had a whole generation who were learning to lust after a ton of JDM cars from the game and not caring at all about Ferrari because they had no exposure to them.
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