Most Powerful Production Engines Ever

engines today are crazy stupid powerful how do we get 800 horsepower sedans and SUVs well today we're breaking down the most powerful production engines ever put in cars welcome to Donut some people consider this car the Pontiac GTO the first muscle car ever we'll tell you that it was actually the Oldsmobile Rocket 88 which checks a lot of the same boxes the 1950s Oldsmobile took a relatively small car and gave it the rocket a 5-liter double carved V8 that pumped out 135 horsepower but they went even further with the J2 golden rocket package with an astounding 312 horsepower that's insane for the time microwaves are barely a thing and you're telling me this car can do a burnout that's downright irresponsible the overhead valve setup allowed the engine to breathe much better than older engine designs but the real Innovation that made that power possible was a triple carburetor setup under normal driving conditions the engine was fed by the center carburetor alone to increase fuel efficiency but when you put the hammer down two more vacuum operated carburetors open up greatly increasing the amount of fuel and air going into the engine making a little more power baby fast forward a few years later and everything changes which brings us to this the Pontiac GTO this was the brainchild of John DeLorean who was in charge of Pontiac at the time he actually defied his bosses at General Motors who banned the sale of racing Vehicles by putting a 389 cubic inch V8 under the hood of a Pontiac Tempest and offering it as a dealer option this loophole resulted in a power output of 325 horsepower that's more than double the original rocket 88's power at 135 and other car makers took note of what Pontiac was doing which kicked off one of the most legendary horsepower Wars in history just three years after Pontiac introduced the GTO Chevy introduced the Camaro the Camaro was introduced with the most famous version of the Chevy small block V8 the 350. in that car it made about 300 horsepower and 380 foot-pounds of torque but over the years Chevy started bumping up that power figure 1970 saw the introduction of the LT1 small block in the Corvette and Camaro Z28 the Camaro got a 360 horsepower version but the Corvettes put out 400 that's because GM had a strict rule that no other sports car they made could produce more horsepower than the Halo Corvette I mean that's your top car you can't really have a lesser car this is Angelus Crest Highway one of the best driving spots in LA and to drive the best you've got to use the best So today we're running a stream contact sport O2 tires from today's sponsor Continental Tire they'll give you ultra high performance on and off the track and they're ideal for BMWs and Audis the extreme contact sport O2 tires give you Superior handling and braking it doesn't matter if it's wet or dry Continental track tested these tires to go mile after mile lap after lap they're even equipped with tuned performance indicators check out the letters D and W molded into the tire tread it's really simple if the W disappears then the tire is no longer optimal for wet condition if the D disappears then the tire is no longer Optimum for dry conditions and needs to be replaced do you want the perfect tire for both the street and the track then get a set of Continental extreme contact sport O2 tires to learn more just click the link below I'm gonna go drive more is a 7.4 liter performance engine that is available in the Chevelle or even the El Camino yeah your weird uncle's car Chevy claimed this engine made 450 horsepower but some people say it actually put out over 500. in a car that your uncle has but Chevy wasn't the only company stuffing fat engines into small cars Ford had developed another V8 called the Fe or Ford Edsel over the years this was putting everything from Fort galaxy to the Thunderbird to the Mustang GT versions of it were also used in a Shelby Cobra and the GT40 the fev8 ranged in sizes from 330 cubic inch all the way to 429 but the one we all know and love is the 427 famously used in the Shelby Cobra 427. this Beast made up to 485 horsepower and captured many Boomer hearts in the process later Ford dropped the Boss 429 this was an elite Mustang with a giant hood scoop feeding that 429 cubic inch V8 or 7 liter for all you Europeans out there on paper It produced 375 horsepower but an incredible 450 foot-pounds of torque that's a lot of stumps you can pull but when it was independently dynoed it was said to make closer to 400 horsepower while Pontiac and Ford were early to the market with a GTO and the Mustang Dodge really went ham shortly after and soon the big three were battling it out trying to make more horsepower than the rest but who would win when you think of Chrysler's contributions to the muscle car era you probably think of the Hemi Hemi is short for hemispherical which refers to the shape of the top of the Piston rather than flat it was convex as you can imagine this led to some of the most powerful engines of this time there are a bunch of formidable Mopar engines from this era like the 360 and the 440 but the bosses hogged of them all was the 426 Hemi this hog was produced from 1964 to 1971 and was nicknamed The Elephant because of its massive size and weight topping out at a full seven liters the 426 started as a NASCAR engine then went into production for homologation purposes Chrysler claimed the 426 made 425 horsepower but again independent testers say it was closer to 4 494. despite my love for the 426 though there's one engine from this era that put down even more power that's right there's one engine that's more powerful and more rare than any of the other ones so far Chevys L88 this 427 cubic inch V8 was a special option available for the 1967 Corvette they only made 216 of these things and Chevy rated the L88 at just 435 horsepower but when Car and Driver tested it they found it made between 540 and 580 horsepower which is insane for a car of that time unfortunately for the muscle car though they peaked right before the dreaded gas crisis and soon after companies nerfed their big engines to comply with environmental regulations and what followed was more of a decade of dropping power is a scramble to make engines more efficient it wasn't just the environmental regulations it was also the fact that gas got super expensive and these things got like eight miles to the Gap like not not great if we're being honest so just like that the horsepower war was over at least it wasn't America but elsewhere in the world powerful engines were just getting started does the name Ferrari ring a little bell to you huh it should because I mean that'd be actually pretty crazy if you'd never heard of Ferrari the Prancing horse made its debut in 1947 and soon after they were producing high-powered Racing Engines soon after that those same engines made its way into road going versions of those race cars that they were building one of the most power powerful Ferrari engines of the time was the Columbo V12 named after the guy who designed it for Ferrari giocino Colombo they used variations of this engine for 40 years but one of the most significant versions was the one that came in the 410 super America it was bored out to five liters that triple Weber carbs which is what Joe has for breakfast every morning the 5-liter Colombo V12 made a Max of 395 horsepower in 1960. this was right around the time that a certain tractor manufacturer went in to give Enzo Ferrari a heads up that his car kind of sucked to drive this kickstarted a rivalry that produced some of the biggest and most powerful engines in the country of Europe before the Aventador before the Diablo before the Countach Lamborghini was making screaming v12s that tore up the stadalis one of the most badass versions of this legendary V12 was in the Lamborghini Miura svj the displacement was just 3.9 liters and it made 440hp power and even though this isn't as much as some of the American cars we've talked about these European cars were super lightweight mid-engine and also a bicolo I'm gonna get my ass kicked in Europe Ferrari and Lamborghini would continue to battle for years proving if that you were Rich enough you could afford a vehicle with tons of horsepower and that's a theme with many of the high-powered European cars that came out over the next few years with excess and styling also comes excess and performance they go hand in hand but over in Stuttgart Germany a little company called Porsche was able to make a lot of power from half the cylinders Porsche developed a turbocharged 3.3 liter Flat 6 engine that made 300 horsepower and mind you this is 1978 literally smack dab in the middle of both gas crisis when American cars were lucky to be pushing 200. this thing was so widely that it was nicknamed the Widowmaker because of how hard it was to control like so hard to control that you die and leave a widow behind maybe you have kids and they're left behind too left to fend for themselves well you're down there help these European sports cars evolve to be more powerful more technologically advanced and most importantly way way faster going into the 1980s and that's when another War Began no not the invasion of Granada a speed War a rivalry was born in the race to hit 200 miles per hour in a production car it culminated with three truly iconic cars the Ferrari F40 the Porsche 959 and the roof CTR aka the yellow bird based off a 911 Carrera but technically belonging to an entirely different car company if you want to know more about the yellow bird we actually did a video on it a couple years ago is the very first one built zero zero one I can't believe that we got access to that thing and find it right there and down in the description after you watch this video it was just hanging out in the car elevator Joe was there weren't you yeah the futuristic all-wheel drive Porsche 959's 2.8 liter twin turbo flat 6. that's a lot of numbers made 444 horsepower the yellow bird's twin turbo 3.4 liter Flat 6 made 463 and the Ferrari f40s 2.9 liter twin turbo V8 made 471. just how close those power Figures were to each other made the race to 200 that much more interesting oh and if you're wondering the yellow bird won the race to 200 hitting 213 miles per hour on the Nardo ring uh it's insane however roof wouldn't hold that title for long after just a few years a little company called Bugatti introduced the eb-110 a beautiful Supercar with a quad turbo V12 that's four quad means four the eb-110 took over the spot as the fastest production car thanks to its 553 horsepower but Bugatti only held that title for a single year because the next year the McLaren F1 shattered nearly every vehicle speed record this British mid-engine Center seat Supercar had a BMW developed V12 called the s72 unlike the four Turbo Bugatti the S70 had zero turbos and yet it still managed to produce 618 horsepower somehow this is the first car that makes more power than that Corvette from earlier and it only took 30 years that's insane think about that let that sink in have you let it sink in here this recipe of super expensive luxury cars with high horsepower would continue to grow in Europe but what about normal people when we guys like me get access to powerful cars again huh well that brings us to a little country I like to call Japan Japanese car companies have been using turbos in production engines since the late 1970s and that technology was advancing quickly coupled with the switch from carbureted engines to fuel injection Japanese cars were not only becoming more reliable but way more powerful in fact in the 1990s a lot of people in Japan thought these engines were becoming too powerful growing concerns about car accidents and road safety and a little bit of Street Racing led to a bunch of Japanese Executives getting together and making a pact that they wouldn't exceed 276 horsepower at least on paper these Executives knew that they weren't actually going to stop making muscle up horse machines but they just say the cars only had 276 horsepower to maintain a better Public Image it's a little bit of a cold war over there and that's why if you look at the spec sheets for Skyline GTRs Supras 300zxes and the Subaru 22b they all make 276 horsepower imagine that huge uh spectrum of engine technology all make the same number how is that possible well it's not for example the Supra easily makes 320 horsepower with that big old 2JZ internet and you know what these things can be tuned to make even more power it was like the American muscle car era all over again this time in Japan and luckily America was also starting to get its mojo back around this time in the late 90s Chevy debuted the LS1 V8 in the C5 Corvette like the one sitting behind me right there funny how that worked out the normal version of that motor made around 350 horsepower but the 0 a six trim like the one right here made 405 it even has a badge on the side of that it's saying that that's lower than the C2 Corvette made in the 60s but it was definitely a step in the right direction and as we know the ls would go on to become one of the most universally swapped engines ever and Chevy still continues to refine the engine today turned out Dodge liked the smell of whatever the heck Chevy was cooking over there in Detroit in the 90s and also decided to jump back into the performance ring the first gen viper made 400 horsepower from an 8 liter V10 and Dodge kept refining that to get more and more power over the coming years you can actually learn more about the Viper in this video right here that was the best video I've ever freaking made but Dodge didn't think the Viper should be the only performance car in their lineup and that's when things started to get a little insane as James put it in up to speed a few years ago they threw a party at the end of the world okay they started stuffing massive V8s into anything and everything it started with the Charger and Magnum SRT which got a 6.1 liter Hemi making 425 horsepower an American station wagon with over 400 horsepower had been unheard of for decades but this was America's time for a little comeback as we all know Dodge continued to stuff bigger and Wilder engines into their cars like the Hellcat a 6.2 liter supercharged Hemi which made 707 horsepower when it debuted in 2015 but that was just the beginning they took it a step further with the demon which thanks to an even larger supercharger was able to squeeze out 840 horsepower on race gas that's insane and that's almost nothing compared to the new SRT demon 170 this little Hellraiser right here makes a thousand twenty four horsepower that's more than a Bugatti Veyron what I didn't even realize that until now that's insane I wonder what the warranties like on that and of course Ford and Chevy they've been throwing their hats in the horsepower ring for a few years now the current Shelby GT500 makes 760 horsepower I can tell you that thing is a hoot and the ZR1 Corvette is set to make 800 horsepower with an even more powerful one on the way it's absolutely insane for cars to have this much power let's be honest these things are still pretty normal but what's absurd is what today's supercars are making take the Aston Martin Valkyrie for example which thanks to its Cosworth built naturally aspirated 6.5 liter V12 makes 1 000 horsepower alone and revs to 11 000 RPM dude you think VTEC is sick listen to this thing foreign that with an electric motor and you're making 1200 horsepower but electric motors are not allowed on this list so we gotta bump it back down to a thousand that's right a thousand that's nothing now we got the insane w16 engine found in all Bugatti models this quad turbocharged four turbos 8 liter Behemoth in the form of two V8s Bondo together like this has grown from a thousand horsepower in the early Veyron to an incredible 1825 horsepower in the most powerful Bugatti the bullied the penultimate engine on this list is one near and dear to our hearts it's made by The Maniacs over at Hennessey and you've probably read some news about them lately for a little car called the Venom F5 I've heard about this thing my whole life I feel like under the hood you'll find a 7.6 liter twin turbo V8 that produces a bananas 1817 horsepower come on guys let us know if you want to see us drive this thing I feel like I've heard about this car forever I'm gonna see what got so that brings us to the most powerful car on this list the SSC Tuatara powered by a twin turboed flat plane crank V8 that means it sounds sick this engine was developed with help from Nelson Racing and produced 1 351 horsepower and pump gas okay I know what you're saying big deal my mom's camera does that so if you fill this thing with ethanol you're looking at 17.50 okay but if you put methanol in this thing yeah that's right the fuel that burns invisibly it's scary put that in this thing you're looking at 2 200 horsepower more power than you'd ever need in your life good Lord what are we doing it's like when you think about the scope of the universe you're like it I don't know how far a light year is how far is 12 light years it loses all that's so powerful that power loses meaning what the hell so that does it for most powerful production engines I hope we covered yours and if we didn't let us know your favorite engine down in the comments you know it kind of sucks that gas engines are kind of on their way out but you know EVS are pretty dang fast too and as long as I can go fast that's all I care about so I'll see you next time to know that there's so many stop lights so close together [Music]

Channel: Donut

Views: 1,436,665

Keywords: donut, donut media, cars, james pumphrey, up to speed, moneypit

Id: 7Vyf6p8q7S0

Length: 18min 11sec (1091 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 25 2023