The Gumout GT4586 is a fire-breathing drift car that is 50 percent Toyota GT86, 50 percent Ferrari 458 Italia and 100 percent insanity.
Even an event as car crazy as SEMA can still manage to deliver an automotive surprise and usually it's from the most unlikely source. This year's show has already given us a 220 km/h Toyota SUV, dubbed the Land Speed Cruiser and a 775hp Hellcat-powered Dodge Ram pickup that promises to perform as well as a Dodge Challenger. And that's before we get on to builders like the Ringbrothers and their Cadillac ATS-V phenomenally disguised as a classic 1948 Cadillac Series 62 Coupe.
But so far, none of them have anything on Ryan Tuerck's Gumout GT4586. Tuerck is a Formula Drift driver and decided to create the ultimate Frankenstein drift machine. Starting off with the Toyota GT86, a great tuners' car thanks to its coupe form, low centre of gravity, boxer engine and rear wheel drive, he decided to perform some open heart surgery.
Dropping a bigger engine in a Japanese car or bolting on turbochargers is nothing new. But taking one of the greatest engines in recent history -- the normally aspirated 5-liter 570hp V8 found in the middle of a Ferrari 458 Italia -- and squeezing it into a tiny Toyota is something else entirely.
And the results, along with the engineering know-how and automotive hacking required to marry the engine with the car, are remarkable, as his videos show.
Ferrari's V8s are mid-mounted, meaning that in order to put the motor in the Toyota where the engine bay is up front, Tuerck has had to run the exhausts through and out of the car's front bumper so when he accelerates or decelerates the car breathes fire.
What's more, the engine's headers and valve covers are so big that Tuerck has had to jettison the car's hood altogether, but that just adds to its aggressive appeal. And as to how well the car performs, as a demo clip shows, it literally runs rings around a standard Ferrari.
There is a long and less than illustrious history of Japanese and Italian car companies collaborating, a trend that hit its nadir with the Alfa Romeo Arna which married the worst aspects of an Alfa Romeo with the worst elements of a Nissan. But this collaboration, if purists can get past the sacrilege of using a V8 supercar as an organ donor, is a marriage worth celebrating.
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