Dreamlike one-off: Porsche 917 miniature engine by Herb Jordan

Herb Jordan was a highly respected Canadian engineer, an extremely creative person who became known as IBM Canada's "Mr. Inventor". He built everything from his own motorcycle with a rotary valve to his own Formula III racing car. As a long-standing member of the Toronto Society of Model Engineers, his second passion was sophisticated model building. Above all, the construction of miniature engines that were absolutely true to scale and fully functional.

One of his best-known 1:3 scale miniatures is the famous Porsche Carrera DOHC four-cylinder Type 904 engine with two downdraft twin carburetors. The "Four-Cam" first appeared in the early 1950s as a compact and powerful racing engine for Porsche's famous 550 Spyder. This engine was built in various displacement sizes from 1,500 cubic centimeters up to 2.0 liters, with which it developed almost 200 brake horsepower in racing use.

The miniature engine shown here is a true-to-scale 1:4 replica of the venerable Porsche 917 engine including twin turbochargers. "Stunning" is probably the appropriate word that came to mind when Porsche introduced the incredible 12-cylinder boxer engine in the late 1960s, a 5.4-liter monster that produced up to 1,500 hp, with which the 917 won at Le Mans and dominated the Can-Am series at will thanks to the twin turbocharger.

After the late Herb Jordan had designed and built a working scale model of the four-cam Type 904 engine, he set to work on the plans for a miniature 917 engine. Using a 10-inch lathe, a milling machine and numerous other tools, he patiently and with great precision produced the countless aluminum, steel alloy and brass parts he needed for this fantastic replica.

Jordan's Flat-12 has a displacement of just 54 cubic centimeters and achieves an incredible 24,000 revolutions per minute. The crankshaft is milled from a single block. The gear-driven mechanical fuel injection pump is only the size of half a pencil, the tiny oil lines are even properly wire-braided, and the engine has beautifully machined and finned cylinders and valve covers. With a compression ratio of 8.5:1, this engine can produce more than enough horsepower, fed by methanol and with the help of two tiny turbochargers. The engine measures 15 inches in length, 8 inches in width and 7 inches in height and weighs around 15 pounds. In December 2015, this unique collector's item was auctioned off in New York by RM Sotheby's for 54,625 US dollars.