While many car manufacturers were finding clever ways to squeeze hundreds of horsepower out of three and four-liter engines, Dodge did what Dodge does best and just made a pushrod engine with ten huge pistons, each made by melting down an entire Dodge Neon.
The resulting 8.0-liter engine was not enough and thus later increased to 8.3 liters, and again to 8.4 liters. This is basically the laziest way to make an engine with lots of power, and is why people can reliably double the horsepower with forced induction and no engine modifications.
There’s no replacement for displacement, they say. But there is, since displacement just allows more air to flow through the engine, you can accomplish the same thing with turbochargers. But as they say on the internet, porque no los dos? Why not stick two giant jet-engine looking turbochargers onto your Viper engine and see if you can draw the attention of the National Weather Service.
Sal Patel decided to give it a go with his second-generation Viper. The resultlooks and sounds kind of like a T-Rex got into a bar fight with a tornado. Huge volumes of air squished down into eight liters and then exploded out the exhaust 60 times a second creates enough wind to throw papers around the room and shake the banners on the wall. Are you sure you don’t want some screens on those intake trumpets? The Dyno shows 2872 horsepower, which is about how much you would get if the naturally aspirated Viper had come with 64 cylinders.
It’s unclear the modifications the engine has, but this Viper holds the rear-wheel-drive record for the standing half-mile with a top speed at 244.43 mph on what dragtimes.com called “a stock (sleeved) engine block.”