Road Test
Back in the Johnson Administration, the flamboyant Sen. Everett Dirksen once remarked about a proposed spending bill, "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money." And so it is of the many staggering statistics with which we've lately become so bemusedly blasé. For sale in America's showrooms right now, for instance, are 12 street-legal automobiles producing 400 or more horsepower. On any given day, an air-conditioned Corvette targa six-speed can achieve 170 mph; a Viper GTS, 186. Following her book deal, Monica Lewinsky can afford either. And if Monica married Michael Schumacher--whose pay packet this year swells to $28 million--the two could buy both of these cars, plus Belgium.
Well, maybe that's pushing it. But you see how easy it is to act all suave and worldly in the face of sums that would reliably have induced debilitating strokes in all four of your grandparents. And so it falls to us--journalistic voyeurs that we are--to make matters worse by gathering the two most preposterously potent made-in-America aftermarket products produced by the reigning purveyors of gratuitous horsepower: John Lingenfelter and the Brothers Terpstra--Roy and Joe, who do not comprise a Vegas act involving Bengal tigers.
Together, the vehicular duo here produces 1427 horsepower, about the same as 11.4 Toyota Corollas. Their combined top speeds--431 mph--represent a healthy cruising velocity for a commuter jet. To park both in your garage, you'll want to be holding $269,883 of income not yet committed to your daughter's wardrobe.
Enough already? Sufficiently boggled? Hah! We're not even close to being finished. You want a fact more amazing than any we've eructed so far? Try this: Last July--and you should probably take a seat before you finish this sentence--John Lingenfelter got married. We could keep on like this, but 9 out of 10 American cardiologists warn against it.
Lingenfelter Twin-Turbo Corvette Stage II
If you've been paying attention, you already know that America's premier Corvette tuner is in the white-hot thrall of turbochargers. Having temporarily run out of developmental wiggle room on the LS1 V-8, silver-haired John Lingenfelter, 54, turned for answers to a pair of Garrett T28s puffing at a docile five pounds of boost. That was good for 500 horses in a car Lingenfelter called the Twin-Turbo Stage I (C/D, March 1999). It goes almost without saying that Mr. L--and several of his less restrained customers--in short order asked, "What if we just cranked up the boost to, oh, say, about 8.5 pounds?"
This is the sort of thinking that led Sir Isaac Newton to cranial injuries caused by falling fruit. Nonetheless, John's investigatory "what if" resulted in 650 horsepower and 600 pound-feet of torque, a twisting force sufficient to alarm even the chief engineer of a Los Angeles-class nuclear attack sub. This new Twin-Turbo Stage II package includes blueprinting, ported cylinder heads, larger stainless intake valves and Inconel exhaust valves, a Lingenfelter camshaft, forged aluminum pistons, a forged steel crankshaft, steel connecting rods, two air-to-air intercoolers, 20 pounds of eels in a plastic pail, and, well, the list eventually leads to an IRS audit, but at this point all you really need to know is that your favorite teller is gonna have to approve a bank draft to the tune of $43,995, essentially doubling the price of your Corvette. Course, after you wade through the painful finances, you'll almost certainly have become the first non-Crusader in town to own a siege weapon.
Wait. That's unfair. There's no hint of weaponry about this Corvette, although it might fairly be dubbed ballistic. In fact, when you slip into the driver's seat, the first thing you notice is that there's nothing to notice. The engine starts right up, it idles as if stock, and it makes about as much racket as a Camry. Wanna poke around the hotel parking lot at 3 mph in reverse? No sweat. There's no low-speed stumble or bucking or hesitation. No telltale turbo whine at less than 3000 rpm. In fact, as long as your right foot doesn't summon revs that provoke the Garrett twins, you're dealing with little more than a stock-displacement V-8 bumping along at a 9.1:1 compression ratio. "When I first drove it," says blue-eyed owner Jerry Crews, "it was like driving a Cadillac to church." Further subduing this C5's around-town countenance is a 2.73:1 rear end--installed here, of course, in support of colossal top speed.
