The Skoda Yeti is, in my opinion, the least attractive car made on the Volkswagen PQ35, also shared with the Golf 6, Beetle and Audi Q3. It's about as interesting to look at as a sandwich maker and space seems to be its only redeeming feature.
Most buyers are in their 50s, sometimes even retired. But the good thing about a boring, slow car is that when somebody does an engine swap, things get a whole lot more interesting.
A British company that goes by the name The TT Shop / TTS Roadsport took a pre-facelift version of the Yeti and transformed it into a monster… Yeti Frankenstein, we might call it.
We may be glazing over the finer details here, but essentially, the Yeti was stripped down to a naked shell. The old engine was a 2-liter turbodiesel making 170 horsepower, and it was removed together with the gearbox, suspension, and all-wheel drive system.
None of them would last a day while connected to the monstrous 2.5-liter turbocharged inline-5 from the TT-RS. In stock form, this puts out 340 PS but, with the help of a Loba LO500+ turbocharger and de Revo Performance Stage 3 engine map, this has been increased to 510 horsepower.
Just to put that into perspective, the Yeti has more power than an early Lamborghini Gallardo V10 supercar. That's got to count for something, right?
That's almost exactly three times more than what Skoda gifted its SUV. We're curious to see if this Czech car can now walk all over the Mercedes-Benz GLA 45 AMG. But for now, a race between it and the Audi R8 at the famous Brands Hatch circuit in Britain.
Mihnea's favorite cars have already been built, the so-called modern classics from the '80s and '90s. He also loves local car culture from all over the world, so don't be surprised to see him getting excited about weird Japanese imports, low-rider VWs out of Germany, replicas from Russia or LS swaps down in Florida. Full profile
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