How To Improve an Insane LS-Engined Track Car? Add a Huge Turbocharger?

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

I was too busy examining considerably less powerful race cars last weekend at Michigan’s Gingerman Raceway to track down the owner of this fine machine and ask the many questions it inspired. Just one glance at the engine, however, tells us a terrifying/awe-inspiring power-to-weight story.

It appears to be a homebuilt, mid-engined creation with a straight-outta-the-junkyard GM LS V8 being force-fed nearly enough boost by a very large turbocharger. Yes! It was seriously quick around the track, of course, and it never once flew off into the woods while backwards and on fire.

Note the gratifying lack of prettification and Soviet-tractor-grade sturdy structure. How much do you suppose the parts for this monster cost? Probably much less than a Spec Miata… and there must be some states that would grant it license plates. One can only hope.


Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.

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  • Rrhyne56 Rrhyne56 on Apr 22, 2011

    Well suited for picking on posers in ricers.

  • Mechimike Mechimike on Apr 25, 2011

    No problem with allowing that on the roads here in SC...now of course registering it will be a whole extra matter...our DMV ranges from completely clueless to intentionally obstructionist.

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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