Any custom car that tops 1,000 hp deserves to have a cool nickname that plants the seeds of fear into the hearts of its competition. It needs to be powerful and gigantic, preferably with teeth and claws. With most drag racing champions being Nissan GT-Rs, there can only be one rival for a sea of Godzilla lizards, and that's King Kong.
This high-powered beast resides not in New York, but in Texas. "King Kong" definitely has enough brawn to take on Godzilla, with 1,300 horsepower coming from a highly tuned twin-turbo boxer engine, squeezed inside the body of a 996.
After taking a tuned GT-R and another 911 in lower stages of boost, "King Kong" is pushed to its full potential: 1300 horsepower, about 3 times more than the stock Turbo would have had. But if it's one thing we've learned from motorsport, it's that big power means big crashes, even if driving in a straight line.
On one of the hottest laps of the Texas Invitational, driver Kong Chang's Porsche 996 blows a front tire and is sent spinning. Seeing the car is headed towards the grass, he corrects and stabilized it, minimizing the damage. Despite destroying one tire right to the rim, Chang safely brings the Porsche to a full and safe stop.
"I'm good, I've spun out faster than that," says mister Chang after spinning out at 170 mph (273 k/h), a speed that could have killed him. If there's a medal for bravery during drag racing, he deserves it.
Mihnea's favorite cars have already been built, the so-called modern classics from the '80s and '90s. He also loves local car culture from all over the world, so don't be surprised to see him getting excited about weird Japanese imports, low-rider VWs out of Germany, replicas from Russia or LS swaps down in Florida. Full profile
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