Have you recently checked out how much a Toyota 2JZ GTE engine sells for? Looking at eBay Motors, prices start at more than $5000.
Sure, you could save a little and get a non-turbo 2JZ, but what about considering one of the following engines as an alternative? These also have aftermarket support while being something a little different.
And prices? …
I have been seeing a lot of buzz about the VW 2.5 swap. It is an interesting engine and they put it in a ton of stuff meaning it should be relatively inexpensive.
Two whinging points: The Atlas's two 5 cylinder variants were the 3500 and 3700. The 2900 was a four-cylinder.
I used to service Vigors with the G25 engine. I thought they were neat because they were a longitudinal front driver with a separate differential mounted under the front of the engine. What sucked about them was they still used a distributor, up against the firewall, and these distributors liked to eat the bearings, as other Honda engines of the timeframe also liked to do. When this happened on the G25, the distributor would seize. When this happened, the camshaft would break, being somehow weaker than the distributor drive or the timing belt.
Chris Tropea said:I have been seeing a lot of buzz about the VW 2.5 swap. It is an interesting engine and they put it in a ton of stuff meaning it should be relatively inexpensive.
It was very popular to swap into older longitudinal Audis as of ten-fifteen years ago. It was something like four inches shorter than the 034 five cylinder, which gave more room for a front mounted intercooler or even a front mounted radiator in an ur-quattro. The valvetrain and oil pump setups didn't have the same RPM limitations, either. And it was lighter and the cylinder head flowed a lot better than even a heavily modified 20v (2.2l) head. People were swapping out their 20vs that only made 500-600hp for 07K based engines that made.... more.
But the sad thing, today, is the companies that used to sell swap parts like oil pans, motor mounts, intake manifolds, etc are no longer doing it for lack of interest. Heck, a forum that used to be the locus of 07K swap information has shut down due to lack of interest. The left side motor mount is the tricky one, because there are no real good bosses on that side of the engine except for the oil filter housing pad, so this pad was used to build a mount off of. Which necessitated that the motor mount have oil lines running through it to a remote oil filter.
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
Ah yes. Good catch, and thanks for pointing it out.
And I'm not surprised about the G25, I figured that there were a few reasons why they aren't really a thing nowadays.
In reply to Colin Wood :
I'm pretty sure that it was only available in the Vigor, and may have been a base model engine. (The Legend, later rebadged as 3.2 and 3.5 RL, had V6s, I don't recall if the Vigor ever got it as an upgrade)
All Vigors I have ever seen were automatics. They had all the power of an Accord with a 25% larger engine in a chassis that felt 30% larger, Every Vigor that I ever drove chirped the tires on a 1-2 shift when just driving around normally. Honda was not interested in shift smoothness at the time, they wanted the trans to shift as quickly as possible, and torque management quite literally hadn't been invented yet (Ford did that in a few years in the Taurus). I expect that this behavior was probably a bit off-putting for most.
Edit: TIL that the Vigor was a stretched Accord and not at all based on the Legend. Weird of Honda to make two very similar cars on different platforms. Normally they make two fairly different cars on the same platform 
We once toyed with doing a Barra motor in the 1200 just to be different but now that I have the Mustang that went out the window forever.
As for the Toyota V8s I love them and would love to put one in a 70s Celica or the like.
How is the M103/M104 not on the list? Basically the German 1JZ/2JZ for way cheaper. And there's an actually aftermarket for turbos and standalones now.
File this under "TIL": years ago, I rented a VW Jetta with that 5 cylinder motor in it and was completely underwhelmed. I wouldn't have guessed its potential. Thanks for the education.
In reply to Coniglio Rampante :
YouTube is full of videos of this engine making 800-1000hp at the crank.
Apparently the fun thing is finding one with a forged crank. VW was apparently kind of indifferent about which engines got it, but some years were more likely to have forgings than others. All turbo versions (TT-RS, RS3) had forgings but they also had a weird flywheel bolt pattern. The cast crank is apparently "only" good to 500-600 
Pete. (l33t FS) said:Edit: TIL that the Vigor was a stretched Accord and not at all based on the Legend. Weird of Honda to make two very similar cars on different platforms. Normally they make two fairly different cars on the same platform
Yeah, the Vigor is such an anomaly in Honda's history, at least in the U.S.
That's probably why I like it so much.
Pete. (l33t FS) said:In reply to Coniglio Rampante :
YouTube is full of videos of this engine making 800-1000hp at the crank.
Apparently the fun thing is finding one with a forged crank. VW was apparently kind of indifferent about which engines got it, but some years were more likely to have forgings than others. All turbo versions (TT-RS, RS3) had forgings but they also had a weird flywheel bolt pattern. The cast crank is apparently "only" good to 500-600
Damn, that's impressive. It never dawned on me that the the Jetta motor was the base for the turbo Audis. Thanks.
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