Crate motors are all the rage these days, and automakers are all seeking a way to cash in. Ford is bringing the 5.2-liter supercharged Predator motor from the recent GT500 to the Ford Performance catalog. The Blue Oval is more than happy to drop 760 horsepower and 625 lb-ft of torque into your lap for a price. And that price is a sticky one, as the privilege of big boost V8 will run you $25,995, 0r about the same price as one brand new base model Ford Ranger pickup truck.
You know about the Predator by now. It’s a big monster beef boy of an engine ready to rip up the road, your tires, your wallet, all of the gas stations, and your entire home town. With an Eaton TVS R2650 supercharger pushing gobs of air into the combustion chambers, and an entirely forged rotating assembly, the motor is ready to make the best of that air by turning it into thousands of explosions and lots of tire smoke.
This engine is a rowdy player in the scene, and gives the GT500 probably too much power to be any good. The GT350 is probably a cooler car than the GT500, but maybe the GT500’s engine is cooler in something that isn’t a GT500? Let’s think about it for a little while.
Should Jalopnik buy one of these to stuff into our Lada Riva Lemons car? Could I find a way to mount a seat on the back of this crate engine and bolt two wheels onto it to make the worlds sketchiest motorcycle? Should Jason put an engine that costs as much as 21 Changlis into his Changli that cost as much as one Changli? Maybe Mercedes could power a bus with it, or make a diesel Touareg more reliabile. If you had one of these engines in your back pocket, what would you stick it in?
Ford Performance part number M-6007-M52SC is an already expensive crate engine, but if you buy one right now you’ll be several hundred dollars short of getting it to run. Ford also sells a control pack for the engine that hasn’t been priced yet. The crate motor comes with all of the mechanical bits of the process, including the exhaust manifolds, the starter, the alternator, and even the air conditioning compressor. It doesn’t, however, come with any of the electronics you need to power it up. No wiring harness, no ECU, no sensors. Building that yourself is basically a non-starter, so be prepared to pony up even more than a base Mustang to get your GT500 engine to start.
The great thing about this is that it should provide a tried and true reliable 760 horsepower all day every day, which isn’t something easy to say from many home-built engines. This one is factory developed with big power in mind, so you can probably trust it to give your fiberglass-bodied Cobra replica a tire shredding powertrain for the rest of your life. Which will be short.
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