A 1950s Fiat 500 is fun and charming in the way that only quirky old European runabouts can be, but with a two-cylinder engine making roughly a dozen horsepower, it was never going to be fast.

This project car fixes that problem so decisively, it's almost terrifying. Because what we have here is a 1957 Fiat cabriolet with—yes—a 300-horsepower turbocharged boxer four-cylinder from a Subaru WRX STi slapped into it.

Well, not into it, so much as "to the tail end of it." Amazingly, a 2.5-liter boxer four with turbo and intercooler doesn't quite fit where the original air-cooled 479cc twin used to go. A sleeper this thing is not.

But you've got to admire the batshit ingenuity that went into building this. An Abarth-style rear spoiler doubles as a framework to hold the STi engine's top-mount intercooler; the speedometer is centrally mounted in the hub of the steering wheel, which sounds like a wiring nightmare; a Porsche G50 limited-slip and 930 axles get the power to the ground.

And hoo boy, the power. Skip to 2:17 in this video to watch how squirrelly it gets at full-throttle, even with the driver short-shifting:

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This thing probably isn't what you'd call a fully polished build: The carbon-fiber-look vinyl detailing on the bodywork is a little wonky; it's got a 10-point roll cage, but doesn't seem to have any kind of passenger restraints. No wonder the eBay listing claims it's only seen a touch over 2200 miles.

Still, if you like the semi-suicidal sound of 300 turbocharged horses in a sub-2000-pound minicar sitting on 175-width tires and 13-inch wheels, we like the cut of your crazy-ass jib. And you might be able to score a screaming deal: Though the eBay listing claims nearly $15,000 worth of work went into this wackadoo machine, the current bid is well below $5000 at the time of writing.

via Hooniverse

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