When one thinks about the lifespan of the air-cooled VW engine you have to be impressed, right? These things pre-date WWII and they are still being innovated on, hot rodded, and boosted to power levels that would make the factory engineers that designed the platform freak the hell out. Take this video for example. You are going to see a turbocharged, efi equipped air-cooled VW engine make 300+ horsepower on the dyno and look damned good doing it. CB Performance built this engine, which displaces 2276cc for a longtime customer and they went with his requests to have the engine in the off-white/tan coloration. Interestingly the customer wanted the fittings and anything that was no the tan color to be clear anodized. This is a good looking and great sounding engine.
The cool part about this video is that it not only shows off the engine making great noise and making horsepower on the dyno, the company uses it to show off their EFI for these engines and we get to watch the data logging process and see some of the numbers as this four banger does work. Not extreme RPM engines this one was done by just over 6,000 but made power the whole way up to that rev limit.
This engine would be bloody fun in any VW contraption from a Bus right on down to a Beetle. We do not know where this particular piece went but judging by the particular tastes of the owner, it went into something awesome.
