We’re big fans of the Dodge Viper around here (Adam and I, especially). This is the car I hung on my walls and doodled in class—the epitome of the aspirational American sports car. And despite its numerous flaws, it remains a bucket-list car for me. But despite my unmitigated fanboyism, I am not a Viper purist. In fact, the Chrysler Firepower, which was nothing more than a re-bodied Viper with a Hemi V8 and 5-speed Mercedes automatic, is one of my favorite concept cars of all time. Others call it blasphemy.
So when BoostedMotorsports showed up for Roadkill last week with a Hurricane-swapped Viper, I took zero offense. I had a hunch the Hurricane I6 could more than do the car justice, and besides, the V10’s engine note isn’t exactly one of the car’s most endearing attributes. A different sound might be welcome relief to some. Admittedly, after hearing this thing fire up in person (and truly, the video doesn’t do it justice), it was a lateral move at best.
BoostedMotorsports stripped the high-output Hurricane of its factory twin-turbo setup in favor of a single, twin-scroll turbocharger mated to an in-house manifold. Straight out of the box, the Hurricane puts down 492 horsepower and 345 lb-ft of torque at the wheels; that’s 42 more horsepower than the ’96 GTS made at the crank. But the turbo I6 probably weighs as much as the old aluminum V10 (if not more), and nobody’s going to be happy with some middling gains. This is a Roadkill build, after all; the dirtier, the better.
One the second run, they instantly find another 50 lb-ft of torque, but no meaningful power. The next round of turning proves significantly more fruitful, netting them 593 horsepower and 544 pound-feet. And at this point, they’re still getting started. Round four: 704 horsepower and 616 pound-feet of torque. By round five on the dyno, the I6 is putting down more power than a stock Hellcat puts out at the flywheel.
In the final run, the team manages to coax more than 840 horsepower out of the Hurricane. And apparently there’s even more where that came from, but they wanted to make sure the car would survive its Roadkill debut before they went too hard with it. On the track, the team was running a tune that produced more than 900 horsepower at the wheels. Dang.
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