Reinis Babrovskis Photography: Subaru BRZ V8

SUBARU BRZ

NO REST FOR THE MAD MEN

Text and Photos: Reinis Babrovskis

How does one decide to enter a Subaru Dealership, buy a brand new BRZ and immediately swap the engine for a V8, I do not know, but I am glad there are people like Andrew from Momentum Motorsport that just do that. Ladies and gents – Momentum Synergy V8 Subaru BRZ.

Andrew sourced the BRZ from Eastwood Subaru, his local Dealership in Northern Ireland. The car chosen: a lovely pearlescent white, with zero miles on the clock. Following a short journey to his tuning garage the work could commence; it took Andrew just a few months to transform the car.

When Toyota announced the collaboration with Subaru and the return of the iconic 86 it shook the automotive world and rightly so, the GT86/BRZ is a true sports car that offers the perfect driving experience. The car was highly praised by motoring journalists, with many adding that the car just lacked one thing – the power. 200bhp from the Subaru boxer was just not enough for a modern sports car. The beautiful chassis was capable of much more and it deserved it.

Many tuners around the world used this new platform for building their demo cars. Whereas many just focused on the looks, Andrew’s plans were simple – just do what he does best - build one bad ass race car, aka a wolf in a sheep’s skin. There aren’t any ludicrous racing spoilers, over fenders, diffusers, splitters, nothing that makes this car stand out. In fact, unless you look up close and notice the big brakes or Recaro racing seats, there is nothing else that gives away the car is a beast on four wheels.

The car looks pretty stock’ish, that is… until the bonnet gets opened.

The BRZ flat four has been replaced with a 2.4 V8, code name ZN6/ZC6, revving up to mind blowing 11,600RPM. If you are unfamiliar with the engine – Synergy originate from New Zealand, where the engine was initially designed for the local Midget Car Speedway racing cars. The company came up with the idea of mounting together two 1,200cc Kawasaki engines, joining them at the crank. It is an engineering masterpiece with high end components; the price tag obviously reflects it. The engine can be bought from Synergy at a price of 70,000 dollars.

The engine is lighter than the factory 2.0 also and offering a lower centre of gravity. Furthermore, the ZN6/ZC6 is perfectly sized for the small BRZ engine bay, it also produces a lot more power – 400bhp to be exact. The Peak power is gained at 10,300RPM producing 271NM (8,000RPM). The cold air is fed through eight throttle bodies, whilst the hot air exits through the beautifully crafted exhaust manifold and custom exhaust. The beautiful alloy trumpets are surrounded by the carbon air box. The whole orchestra is directed by Motec M150 ECU.

The Synergy 2.4 V8 could be directly attached to the stock Subaru/Toyota 6 speed gearbox with the Synergy adaptor plate; however, Andrew opted for the Quaife QBE 60G inline sequential gearbox with Momentum BRZ/GT86 bellhousing and Helix Twin Plate clutch. With the high revving acceleration power of two combined superbikes, having a manual H pattern gearbox would be insane, the sequential complements the engine with superfast shifts (sub 60ms) and the Motec M150 allows for flat shift and auto-blip.

When building a fast car, a thing not to ignore is the capability to stop quickly. Andrew opted for an AP Pro 5000 6 Pot front callipers with a 356mm floating discs sat the front and an AP 4 pot kit on the rear. The stock wheels got replaced in favour of some JDM eye candies – 18” Rays sized 8.5 and 9.5 at the rear. The wheels were dressed in some Yokohama AD08 rubber. The car also was upgraded to Ohlins Road and track suspension.

The interior remained subtle and road functional as Andrew will use this car regularly. For extra stability, and safety the standard seats were swapped for Recaro Pole Position fixed bucket seats sitting on Planted Technology seat rails and Recaro runners. The standard gauges as one would imagine were never designed to show 13,000RPM so Synergy custom RPM counter took its place.

Combination of a high revving lightweight engine in a beautifully built chassis works together like a hand and glove, the car goes and handles like a dream, Andrew is planning on taking on the Spa Francorchamps in the foreseeable future to see what the car is capable of. Momentum Motorsport has once again proved there is a huge talent in such a small country and they are capable of building world level cars.