Why the Porscharu succeeds so well in rallycross | Articles

July 17, 2024

What happens when you merge two iconic rally marques? Apparently rallycross domination. Meet the Porscharu of Leon Drake, which melds a Porsche 914 chassis with Subaru EJ20 power. It’s won the past two SCCA National RallyCross Championships, with Leon behind the wheel in 2022, and Jason Fuller last year.

“Mid-engine works well because you have more weight toward your drive wheels–you got more traction,” explains Leon. “Most rear-wheel drives don’t have good traction. And the weight is very low–at about 1850 pounds. Most of the time you’re turning, and turning is when weight fights you.”

Leon didn’t arrive at the magic formula for the Porscharu overnight. In fact, the idea of the car wasn’t even his–he just refined it. Leon bought the Porsche 914 from a fellow SCCA club member, Gary Horneck. It came as a gutted rolling chassis, with a Renegade engine cradle and a Subaru EJ25 drivetrain.

“He had planned to do a project,” Leon explains. “Gary got cancer and he wasn’t going to be able to finish it–he has since passed away. The car at the time was still kind of the way he had gotten it. Somebody had built it like a street rod–and it was horrible. It had huge fender flares. The front air dam was done out of steel, and it wasn’t done well. They figured if they put enough Bondo down where you welded, you didn’t need to grind your welds.”

Right after Leon bought it, he went to work converting it over to a rallycross car. He cut off the fender flares and replaced them with ones he had for a Jeep. Its appearance, though, wasn’t the only thing causing issues for Leon. He quickly found that out when he did his first rallycross with Porscharu in 2019.

“The Renegade cradle wasn’t strong enough for off-road use,” Leon says. “I broke it in half the third or fourth race in, and I had to reinforce it. The first two years the car didn’t finish a lot of races. Things broke. Axles kept coming undone–I had to engineer my own axles. I originally had the radiator in back and I packed it so full of mud I moved [the radiator] up front. It had a 2.5–I went through three of them–and now I’ve got a 2.0. These are the kind of things that had to get reworked.”

Yes, with the smaller 2.0-liter engine the Porscharu makes about 130 horsepower, estimates Leon, but he quickly adds, “How much can you get down to the dirt?” To make that engine live, he took two additional measures.

“All Subarus should be a dry sump … and keep the dirt out of them,” advises Leon. “With a good air cleaner and a dry sump system, I can beat the tar out of it a whole lot more.”

The car uses a stock Porsche 914 suspension setup, with coil springs in back and torsion bars up front.

“What I have found is heavy-duty factory shocks and springs is the way to go,” Leon says. “To keep the tires in contact with the ground, you need a fairly soft suspension. If you stiffen the suspension, you’ve ruined it. I run without sway bars because I want those tires on the ground.”

The car retains its stock five-speed Subaru manual gearbox, but with Quaife internals, and has a limited-slip differential. It also uses the stock Porsche brakes.

“Don’t need fancy brakes on the dirt,” he says. “You can lock them up with stock brakes–it doesn’t matter.”

Leon isn’t done modding the Porscharu. Despite being insistent that it’s not all about power, he believes it may be time for some more. Leon upper that number to 189 horses, courtesy of a 2006 WRX turbo and a Haltech ECU.

“I ran it last weekend for the first time with turbo boost and can testify it’s another two levels better on the fun meter, if that’s possible,” says Leon.

He had to fabricate a lot of parts to make the turbo work with a non-turbo engine, but he hopes that it will give him what he needs as the Porscharu contends for a third consecutive SCCA RallyCross National Championship win in October.

“It’s a Frankenstein,” Leon says of the Porscharu. “I like putting things together that haven’t been done before. It is a test bed for ideas. It’s been a lot of fun.”