If you know TSH Auto, you probably know them from their drifting Porsche Cayenne. A 4,800-pound SUV with full interior, slammed on 22-inch rims, doing donuts. It's exactly as unhinged as it sounds, and it became the calling card of a team that doesn't do normal.

But the Cayenne is big. Heavy. And after building their RS5 into a proper full competition car, Vasily found himself wanting something in between. Something lighter than the Cayenne, more capable than a straight street car, and with enough room to carry four passengers in something that still felt like a Porsche.

The Macan was the answer. Smaller than the Cayenne, better proportioned, and when you drop it down it barely even reads as an SUV. Adam put it best on camera: lower it a bit and you'd probably just call it a hatchback.

The genius of the whole build is in the platform overlap. The Macan is essentially a Q5, which shares its platform with the Audi A5 and A6. TSH already had three years of development with FDF Raceshop building out their RS5 competition car on exactly that platform. The suspension geometry, the angle kit, the grip kit. All of it carried over. They weren't starting from scratch. They were applying everything they already knew to a chassis with a Porsche badge on it.

The Engine: RS7 Hot-V in a Porsche SUV

Pop the hood and you find a 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8 pulled from a 2016 Audi RS7. TSH Auto is an Audi and German car repair specialist, so keeping it within the VAG family was important to Vasily. Their VR6 car runs a VR6. This one runs Audi V8. The brand identity is intentional.

The RS7 engine is what's known as a hot-V configuration, meaning the turbos sit in the valley between the cylinder banks rather than on the outside. It runs direct injection from the factory, which added a layer of complexity to the standalone tune. That's not a bolt-on swap situation. There was a lot to figure out, and the decision was made to run it on stock turbos first while they got the engine management sorted, then build on top of that foundation.

Because the original car was all-wheel drive and this one is not, the engine had to move nine inches rearward to make the conversion work cleanly. Moving an engine nine inches in any car is a fabrication project. Moving a hot-V V8 that needs custom downpipe routing nine inches in a Porsche SUV is something else entirely. TSH solved the downpipe problem by 3D printing the exhaust elbows in stainless steel. Precision-designed, printed in metal, fit as tight as physically possible. That's a level of fabrication that would have been impossible without modern tooling.

Stock, an S6 engine on these turbos makes around 500 wheel horsepower with 500 lb-ft of torque available at just 3,000 RPM. It's torque-rich, direct injection, and with the small turbos spooling fast it hits hard from low in the rev range. For a drift taxi that carries passengers and needs to be smooth and predictable, that torque curve is actually ideal.

Engine Components:

• 2016 Audi RS7 4.0L twin-turbo V8 (hot-V configuration)
• Stock turbos (phase one)
• 3D printed stainless steel downpipe elbows (custom, TSH Auto)
• Motec M142 engine management (direct injection capable)
• Motec C125 display
• 034 Motorsport air-to-water heat exchanger and pump
• Audi A8 shaft-driven power steering pump
• CSF Universal Triple Pass Dual Core Radiator with AN Fittings

Transmission: 8HP with a Turbolamik TCU

This is where the build gets genuinely clever. Rather than go sequential or H-pattern, TSH runs the Audi 8HP automatic transmission. On paper, that sounds like a strange choice for a drift car. In practice it makes complete sense for what this car is supposed to do.

The 8HP is a platform that Turbolamik has built a dedicated TCU around. Their controller works with any 8HP unit regardless of what car it came from: Aston Martin, Dodge, Audi, it doesn't matter. TSH pulled the unit from a 2018 Audi S5, which bolts directly to the RS7 engine without any adapter plate. Clean, native fitment.

The RWD conversion was designed and built entirely in-house at TSH. The 8HP normally has front and rear differentials integrated into the unit for AWD applications. TSH deleted all of that, pressed in bearings where the drive components used to live, and converted it to rear-wheel drive output only with a custom adapter made in their own shop. Then the whole thing gets controlled by the Turbolamik TCU, which also reads a clutch pedal position sensor so the system knows exactly how the driver is interacting with it.

The clutch pedal itself is the stock Audi A5 assembly because the platform is identical. A Wilwood master cylinder adapter handles the hydraulics. It's a genuinely elegant solution. Use what's already designed for the platform, adapt only what needs adapting.

• TurboLamik TCU Full Kit
• DCT Sequential Shifter 390GT Aluminum
• Drift HQ Bulldog XR420-i 1500HP Quick Change Differential

Suspension: Three Years of Development, Transferred Directly

The suspension package on this car didn't come from nowhere. It came from three years of development between TSH and FDF Raceshop's Josiah building out the RS5 competition car, which has become one of the more technically sophisticated non-Japanese drift cars in the scene.

The front runs a double wishbone FDF angle kit with a BMW E46 rack swapped in for steering. The reason is simple: the stock Audi rack only has 135mm of travel. The BMW unit gives 150mm, which translates directly to more lock angle. The rear runs FDF-developed control arms paired with billet knuckles that TSH and Josiah designed together. The geometry result is zero camber gain and zero toe gain under compression, which gives the car a planted, predictable feel under sustained drift. An active toe option is built into the design for future competition use, but for a drift taxi it stays passive.

It sits on RS5 suspension specs, not lowered to the ground but purposefully set up for functional travel rather than stance. The subframe sits slightly higher than a competition car would need, which keeps the visual height up. A deliberate tradeoff to keep the thing looking like an SUV rather than a slammed sedan trying too hard.

• FDF Raceshop Universal Dual Master Booster Delete
• FDF Raceshop front angle kit (custom Audi/Macan platform, designed with TSH Auto)
• FDF Raceshop rear grip kit with custom billet knuckles
• BMW E46 steering rack conversion
• F80 dual caliper rear brakes
• 034 Motorsport 8-piston 390mm front brake kit
• Rotiform WGR wheels, 10.5-inch front, 11-inch rear
• Falken FK510 tires, 285/30 front and 295/40 rear