LS1 in a 944, if your talking renegade you may want to check us out at porsche hybrids before parting with your money. It's a forum where the ONLY porsches allowed are V8 powered.(well there's a turbo v6 buick but we like him)
http://www.porschehybrids.com/
And lets face it, although the rovers were not 'dropped' in the 60's by buick, they actually went on to produce the engines for one of the best lux SUV's in N.America, the rangie. They also powered many many engines that needed the lightness and torque of the engine.
However lets face it, Rover rested on it's laurels, they had an eccentriclly mounted flywheel for a reason. They had many more tuning options they decided not to explore, instead they kept with the bonehead ideas of the 70's and never moved with the times, possibly because of the 90 degree offset, limiting the development of the heads, condeming it to it's original design. It's old, but so is the LS1. Wouldn't shout about having one of them too loundly, you may find some people yawning.
I have no idea what I would choose next time.
Rovers were a great engine for people on a shestring budget as they allowed the retention of many original parts, that was there strength, they allowed easy tuning and were cheap to do so. Then people thought they should invest thousands on the engine and make it something it wasn't. Fitting Chebby pistons and crank to Rover to make it a 350?? WTF.
I still find it ironic they the biggest class in the rover challange in the late 80's was the 9.90 and they kept breaking out. The hardest part was keeping the cars slow enough,3.5 engines, hand made inlets, reversed P6 manifolds, stock cranks and rods, some had JE or omegas. Most run a MSD and a bang of 100 Nitrous (most on pretty much stock engines), welded diffs and crap tires. Nearly 20 years on and we have forged pistons, extreeme heads and huge capacity engines, injection systems, stand alone ignition, variable nitrous, exotic heads, and has anyone broke through the 10's recientlty.
Just my 2 cents
)
Is PPC still carying ads for tuned 2litre Fords costing £7k? 
