I’d just buy another race car down the road when
it made sense. I drove it for a few weeks and, yeah,
it’s fast and it’s fun, but I couldn’t help but feel
like I needed to make it faster. That’s when I called
the guys at ProCharger. I know some of those
guys pretty well being that they’re based out of
the Kansas City area, and we all agreed that there
was a great opportunity here to put one of their
superchargers on a brand-new C7, especially since
we were really getting a lot of traction with Street
Car Takeover. It’s kind of spiraled out of control
from there.
That’s the way, though, right? You start out
with the best of intentions, just trying to make
something that is already great a little bit
better, and the next thing you know you’re
mounting a parachute or trying to find
someone to put a roll cage in the car.
Yeah, I think that’s exactly how it happens. I’m
not going to let it go that far, but I’m prepared to
push it to the limit of what I believe still constitutes
having a legitimate street car. The focus will be
half-mile racing, but I intend to drag race it and
roll-race it; I want to raise the bar for street cars
as a whole. I want to be able to race it and then
go drive it around town, go to car shows, go get
groceries, whatever I want to do. The goal is to
have an air-conditioned, street-drivable, smalltire car that runs 200 in the half-mile with a
six-speed.
You’ve been bottom 10s in the quarter-mile at
nearly 150mph already, and that’s been with a
six-speed manual transmission. It’s only a
matter of time before track and weather
conditions give you an opportunity to dip well
into the nine-second zone. What changes are
you making to the car to pick up a couple
seconds of elapsed time?
First and foremost, going to an ERL Performancebuilt super deck six-bolt 427ci LT motor with
Callies Ultra Billet rods, Callies crankshaft and
Wiseco pistons with all ARP bolts. We’re going to
a ProCharger F1A-94 and a 300-horsepower
nitrous system from Nitrous Outlet. It should make
1,600 horsepower.
Sounds pretty “race car” to me.
It definitely sounds that way, but that’s not at
what it will be. Between the auto manufacturers
and the aftermarket parts manufacturers, I mean,
the quality of the parts they provide, it’s unbelievable the level of performance you can achieve
without sacrificing reliability or drivability. I know
that we’re pushing the limits with this car, but I
fully intend to drive it everywhere, to drive it all
the time.
The performance industry has made making big
power a very attainable goal.
Exactly. These manufacturers, companies like
ProCharger, they make these parts that are incredibly high quality and if you’ve got even a little
bit of technical ability you can install it yourself
in your garage with basic hand tools. A few weeks
ago I literally watched the guys at ProCharger put
one of their supercharger kits on a Camaro in 30
minutes with four guys. Granted, they do it every
day, but the fact is they dyno’d that car, put it on
the lift and installed the blower and intercooler,
put it back on the dyno and made 200 more
horsepower than when they started. That’s literally all they did. It’s amazing.
I think it all comes back to manufacturers providing all of us car guys with awesome platforms.
GM started doing it with the LS motor and, in my
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