I realize that, in many ways, modernity is piping-hot garbage. But when it comes to being able to shove colossal amounts of horsepower into a car relatively easily, we live in a motherclutching golden age. I say this because Ford has just announced two new crate engines, a 5.0-liter Coyote V8 making 800+ horsepower and 615 pound-feet of torque, and the next iteration of the Megazilla 7.3-liter V8, this time making over 1,000 hp. Just imagine how much peppier your ’89 Ford Tempo will be when you drop one of these babies in there!
For installation in a Tempo, you may have to do some fabrication work to make it rear-wheel drive, though I say don’t rule out a transverse, front-wheel drive setup, because the torque steer when you first stomp on the gas is probably enough to set the car spinning so fast it opens a portal to another dimension, and there may be some cool shit in there.
These new iterations of Ford’s crate engines get their bonkers power numbers from a lot of tweaks, but most significant is the addition of Gen 6 3.0-liter Whipple Supercharger, seen here with its inventor, Mr.Whipple:
A 3-liter supercharger! That’s three times the displacement of my daily driver!
The Megazilla 2.0 engine also includes, according to Ford, “forged pistons, connecting rods, and a steel crank, ported and polished cylinder heads, and upgraded valve springs.”
The 1,000 hp Megazilla 2.0 engine is, sadly, only for racing or off-road use. It’s not legal for a street vehicle, though if you sneak one into a Pinto and try and make it look like a rusty old 2-liter inline-four, I’m sure as hell not going to tell anybody. The 5.0 Coyote V8 is completely street-legal, and not only that, it comes with a two-year or 24,000-mile limited warranty.
The engines are designed for easy installation into project, kit, and low-volume cars, complete with full wiring harnesses and ECUs and all that. Pricing has not been mentioned for either engine, though I wouldn’t expect these to be cheap; that supercharger alone can go for like $9 grand. Still, these are turnkey engines, with pretty much everything you need.
What an age we live in! Terrible decisions and sketchy project car plans have never had such boundless potential!
Anybody else remember FordTempoFanatic from the other site?
At one point, FTF was on *every* site. Hope he’s still flying that freak flag even if it’s not visible online.
Kinda want a awd topaz w a 2.5l 4cyl. Nothing as dumb as this, just an upgrade from a cut down old i6.
This 7.3L 1,000 horsepower engine placed into an accurate replica of the Ford P68 would be amazing. You have a car with a 14 sq ft frontal area, a 0.27 Cd value, and normally weighs 1,400 lbs, although might be around 1,700-ish with that engine.
Consider that this is less than half the mass of a modern car, with a CdA value almost as good as a GM EV1. It would get GREAT fuel economy, but that’s not its greatest strength.
It would be so damned fast that you’d never be able to safely top it out if you geared it according to theoretical top speed calculations. There don’t exist tires to handle that. And because this car was designed to be aerodynamically slippery and has no downforce, it would start to get squirrely around 160 mph, probably half its theoretical max speed. You’d kill yourself. It would be even more uncontrollable than a Hellcat swapped Miata or a TVR Speed 12.
It would be so delicious. Chaos majick distilled into vehicular form, powerful enough to summon Aleister Crowley himself back from the astral plane. I’d love to have such a thing in my non-professional hands, because I’d still hoon the shit out of it, or die trying. Think of the acceleration rate possible…
I’d name it “The Fuel-injected Suicide Machine”, in honor of the Nightrider!
But for pure trolling, you can’t beat a Festiva, Fietsa, Focus hatchback, or Tempo with this engine, really…
Sounds like more fun than a euthanasia pod.
Put it in an Austin. Make sure you have a Spare, though.
The very thought of a 800+ HP Tempo is cause for a smile and laughter. I had an ’84, it was quite anonymous. If the fabrication work was successful, it would be hilarious.
Rip Van Winkle levels of sleeper.
“though I say don’t rule out a transverse, front-wheel drive setup, because the torque steer when you first stomp on the gas is probably enough to set the car spinning so fast it opens a portal to another dimension,”
OR… do it old-Audi/Chrysler LH/Renault 25 style and do longitudinal-FWD where the engine is just hanging out ahead of the front wheels.
If only I still had my 1987 Tempo AWD! This would have been the perfect solution to my serious lack of power!
you’d probably want better binders on the wheels too, to bring that timewarp Tempo to a reasonable stop after destroying performance cars while street racing.
Don’t squeeze the supercharger!
came down here to say that the hypocrite is totally squeezing. look at those knuckle creases.
By the same token, don’t wipe your backside with a Whipple either.
Getting my units of measurements confused. Are we talking HP or TP here?
Tried to see if there was an Engine Masters episode where they tested the effects of an aftermarket catalytic converter on engine performance on the dyno. Seems they never did it.
Jesus Torch, I thought I was free to squeeze the Charmin today (as one does after the Lunar New Year), and then Mr. Whipple appears on my desktop monitor while I’m reading about the potential for V8-powered Ford Tempos. It’s like I’m not safe to sneak a squeeze anywhere these days.
“The 1,000 hp Megazilla 2.0 engine is, sadly, only for racing or off-road use.”
Ha, ha, the joke’s on you. I live in Ohio. We don’t have laws here.
Life’s a race
-Dom
Life’s a race
-Matt Bellamy
I live an hour from the Ohio border and also have family there. Can confirm.
“But officer, I was racing. And does this parking lot look like a road to you?”
Now that each of the big 3 has one, I need someone to do a 1000hp crate engine shootout. The Megazilla vs Hellephant vs ZZ632 (seriously GM you couldn’t come up with a better name for this??)
Agreed. GM’s naming is less than impressive for most of their halo products. It’s raptor vs trx vs zr2, I know which twp sound cool to me. The trail boss is the coolest named Silverado but isn’t the top tier. Unless you’re a GM person it’s hard to know which alpha numeric Corvette package is the best either.
Could not agree more, Shelby Mustang sounds so much cooler than a ZL1 Camaro. Best name they have is Blackwing and even that they messed up by ruining the brand equity the V badge had built up.
I think they lean into their fanbase by naming everything as if its a CPO code from 1965. They’re not selling the engine to you and I, they’re selling it to the GM Fanboy who’s named David Freiburger or similar.
That’s just not a big enough market, they need to appeal to 30-40 year old dude-bros who are buying a car to impress 20-30 year old dude-bros. For that you need to call it a ThunderCougarFalconBird or something.
I don’t know, lots of car people love to call cars by their factory codes. e36, s13, w123, etc.
They could go for a horsepower level WAY above the others and call it the Zora Arkus Fuckov.
I would totally buy one of those, just for the name…
So close. ZZ Top. GM, you’re welcome.
It could come with some decorative white fuzz on the manifold cover, of a material resistant to heat. Maybe asbestos.
Two words: Megazilla Shogun. Backflips for DAYS.
Can they sell me the ready-mount kit to drop it into a Toyota Mirai?
Mirai is tanga-l aka rear wheel drive platform right?
Dude. Are you spying on me? I kid you not, my best friend sent me a link to a marketplace listing for a mint Tempo. (Side note, we had a mutual friend in high school who drove a Topaz and would always talk about wanting to turbocharge it. We would make fun of him endlessly for this because he were immature high school kids. We also made fun of him for bringing is own chalk with him whenever he played pool. It was white. White pool chalk. I never even knew that was a thing. It’s a thing. Where was I?)
Oh yeah. The Tempo. He sent me the listing and we began joking about turbocharging it, then switched to dropping in a big V8, and of course making sure there was some white pool cue chalk.
Either way, I am seriously weirded out that this article happened.
I’m all for Torch’s suggested swap!
As long as I can get Garage 54 to do the install for me….
They would strip out the front suspension, set the monster engine in there sideways and figure out how to bolt the wheels to either end of the crankshaft.
I….
I have no problem with that….
That’s not really G54’s thing… They’d rather hook up a few dozen cordless drills to use as an engine.
With a 1000hp I want more than a driveshaft measured by eye, booger welded together, and no attempt at balancing.
At first I was sure that “Megazilla” was another Torchinsky joke going over my head, but nope, it’s on the plaque under the crate engine.
Godzilla is the regular road legal one you can get in a superduty, so the called the blown racing one megazilla
Every time I see Whipple written out, I vividly hear Dan Cummins.
What is big deal?
Hail Nimrod.
OK, great. What’s the gas mileage though, that’s important!
Whatever you gear it to be, I reckon. Corvettes are low-key famous for highway cruising in the 30mpg range.
Please please please get a the license plate “Presto” for the Tempo. bonus points if there’s a C6 ZR1 style plexiglass window in the hood to show off the Whipple.
The sound of the car disintegrating from the horsepower is going to be a blend of pizzicato spot welds breaking and stacatto groans from the bodyshell
I had a 92 Tempo that was already disintegrating from Indiana winters. It would have been perfect for this.
I helped a friend transplant a Nissan Z18ET engine into a Datsun 1200 Coupe, and this is exactly our experience. Every hard launch was punctuated by the sounds of spot welds breaking, more groans and creaks from an increasingly flexible bodyshell, until it became so floppy it was often difficult to get the doors to open.
And this was only a 133hp engine (although a bigger turbo and turned up boost brought that up a bit later) – 1000hp would have simply twisted the whole rear end out of the car!
GENIUS. And OMG Ford missed massively by not naming their Tempo trims like that!!
The performance Trim – Tempo Allegro
The luxury Trim – Tempo Adagio
The value trim – Tempo Moderato
Well, British Leyland owned Allegro, at least in that market. Not sure it would have been a big deal, since the Tempo wasn’t outside of North America, and the Austin Allegro didn’t really globe-trot, either.
Nobody would have been able to pronounce Adagio….I can see the dealer spots now “Tempo uhDAHGyo for $99 a month with no money down and low, low 13 percent APR!”
Nobody is going to go for a car that says “Moderato” on it. At all.
How long have you been saving that Mr. Whipple photoshop pic just waiting for the right moment?
First shop to put a Megazilla in a Miata wins.
Flyin’ Miata becomes literal.
Tempo: Prestissimo (215 braps per minute)
Mr. Whipple Superchargers?! That’s even better than my joke about KKK turbochargers, which was very inappropriate. But not as tone-deaf as their naming of the company.
I’m old enough for the joke. And technically this whipple squeezes too.
Which box do I check….I wanna order mine with a “Megazilla, and a Mr. Whipple Super Squeezer” on top, please! Oh, and a really serious trans, drive shaft and rear end, too. Oh, yeah, better add some brake rotors the size of garbage can lids, too, please!
“Off road use only” It’s sitting in the engine mounts. It’s not on the road. Counts right?
“‘Technically’ is the best kind of correct!”
Considering the power, whatever it’s going into will mostly be airborne, so also technically correct!