REV HAPPY

Deep pockets, nostalgia, willing automakers and their partners, the rise of technologies that allow for small runs of radical bodies … high-end coachbuilding has become democratized, in a sense. It used to be that only the scions of Southeast Asian sultanates could do this sort of thing; now anyone with $387,000 can order a Boreham Motorworks Ford Escort Mk.I RS. That will get you a car built from a brand-new body and modernized running gear, but will only net you a Ford Twin-Cam making 182 hp. If you want something really exclusive, really unique, your pockets must be emptied further.

Yes, a nearly $400k Escort restomod is knocking on the door of absurd excess even by the standards of the company it keeps. But consider Boreham’s top-spec engine in isolation, and it’ll make you marvel at what modern production techniques now allow for: cost-effective custom engine design. Look at the block; Boreham used 3D printing to design the molds, casting aluminum blocks that are lean, minimal, almost organic. It’s not Czinger’s otherworldly additive manufacturing, but an engine block also isn’t a hypercar’s suspension arm. It’s beautiful in a purposeful sort of way, honed down to its ribs and flanges. 

I can gaze at the castings for a while, but it isn’t an intentionally aesthetically pleasing thing. It’s designed solely to perform. It’s 2.1 liters in displacement, individual throttle bodies, four-valve heads and a 10,000 rpm redline. It’s naturally aspirated, and it makes 325 horsepower. Oh, and it only weighs 187.4 pounds dressed, as shown here, thanks to that minimalist block and the sort of magic that comes from experience with motorsports powertrain development.

Boreham calls it the TEN-K, which is as good a name as any for a mill that sounds this rowdy. It’s not melodic like a carbureted vintage twin-cam, it doesn’t have the shriek of a sportbike motor. It’s as businesslike as a 10k RPM engine can be breathing through ITBs.

There is no listed price and no mention of the TEN-K being available outside of Boreham’s high-dollar, Ford-licensed creations. Not that it would matter if there were, since there are very few future timelines in which a (presumably) five-figure custom engine factors into my life. But I’ll be damned if my foolish brain wasn’t mentally mocking the TEN-K up in every obvious and less obvious possible application. Feverishly, too, as if conjuring up the best possible theoretical home for a TEN-K to live in would make one more likely to appear.

It’s ok to be excited, even irrationally. Boreham’s cars might be great, I won’t know until they’ve reached the good reviewers. The engine, though, might be legendary.