Watch: Jay Leno Drive a Rotary Powered ’66 Beetle

This 1966 Beetle may look like a fairly usual modified bug, but under the hood there’s a big surprise. Instead of the usual four cylinders, this Beetle has none. No, what it has is the rotary Wankel engine out of a 1990 RX-7.

The car was built by Mario Markakis of Los Angeles and is featured on the latest episode of Jay Leno’s Garage. Leno says that he first became interested in the Beetle after seeing it a show. It was surrounded by people while Ferraris and other exotics were being ignored.

The attention is warranted, though, because not only is this conversion very well accomplished, it’s also very fast. From the outside this Beetle looks like a perfectly pedestrian, albeit modified Beetle, and yet it runs 10.50s in the quarter mile, claims Markakis.

The kick this Beetle gets on acceleration is plain to see, as Leno spends about half the episode stamping on the accelerator and pulling past his camera truck. Lively acceleration shouldn’t come as a surprise, though, because Markakis claims that the Beetle was dynoed at 230 hp and that it weighs about 1,800 lbs.

I’m not sure if the trend will catch on, but the compact size of the rotary engine makes it a pretty good fit for this Beetle. What do you think? Sacrilegious or sensible?

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