Minnesota auto aficionado Don Groff used to design manufacturing equipment back in the day, but following retirement, he used the skills acquired from this line of work to create one of the wildest custom cars the world has ever seen. The open-wheel 1JZ V12 we’ll talk about today started out as an idea in 2011, and as you can clearly tell, this fellow harks back to the early days of mid-engine Formula 1 single-seaters.
“I have an uncle who is an evil genius when it comes to cars,” wrote his nephew on Reddit back in December 2014. “His latest project combines two Supra engines into one Frankenstein V12 engine,” and at the time, a quad-turbo setup was under consideration.
Don cut the bottoms of two powerplants, arranged them at 120 degrees, and joined these motors with the help of a custom crankshaft with small-block Chevy main bearings and Honda rod bearings. The H-beam rods are also sourced from Honda, the aluminum oil pan is complemented by a dry-sump pump, two custom-built cam drives are joined by a serpentine drive, and a couple of water pumps are also featured.
Six years after that Reddit post, only a pair of boosty snails are needed to develop 810.3 horsepower and 699.9 pound-feet of torque on E85 fuel at 17.5 PSI. “Every piece of this car was meticulously built from scratch by Don in his workshop,” said Nth Moto, a Minnesota-based auto shop responsible for the dyno video at the end of this write-up and the AEM Infinity ECU that governs the one-of-a-kind blunderbuss.
Considering that each 1JZ cranked out approximately 300 horsepower from the factory, the resulting 5.0-liter V12 still has a lot to prove going forward. However, Groff doesn’t intend to push for 1,000 HP because that would stress the engine too much and the car hasn’t been created for bragging rights on paper or at the drag strip.
Oh, and by the way, the British Racing Green open-wheeler also happens to be a road-legal car. “After a year and a half, I got through the state quagmire and got license plates, a VIN number, and a paper title,” wrote Don’s nephew in a more recent post on Reddit.
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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