Ford Performance Vehicles has just announced details on its all-new V8 engine, named the “Miami” V8.

Set to replace the old faithful Boss V8, the new Miami is a supercharged 5.0-litre unit based on the Coyote V8 currently serving in the Ford Mustang. The Miami will be available in two power outputs within FPV’s model range.

The GS sedan and ute will receive the lower-output Miami V8 (coded V2X) producing 315kW and 545Nm. The full-strength high-spec engine (coded V2G) pumps out 335kW and 570Nm and will be fitted to GT- badged vehicles. Both engines are almost identical mechanically, with only ECU tuning accounting for the difference in output.

These numbers represent a significant jump over the current GS and GT engines, which put out 302kW and 315kW respectively. Further to that, the GT’s 335kW beats out the 325kW output of HSV’s flagship GTS by a full 10kW margin. This should guarantee FPV owners bragging rights for some time.

The shift to a supercharged mill has also allowed FPV to increase torque, even though engine displacement has dropped by 400cc. The full compliment of torque also comes on much lower in the rev range at just 2000rpm for the GS and 2200rpm for the GT.

There is no word yet on exact performance figures from FPV, but there are already suggestions that the new FPV GT could go 0-100km/h in under 5 seconds.

It’s good news in terms of economy as well, with a slight improvement in consumption seeing the GS and GT manual sedans drinking 13.6 l/100km. Automatic sedans use 0.1 l/100km more.

In terms of styling FPV isn’t making any major external changes for now, with the improved powertrain expected to gather serious interest for now.

The 2011 FPV GS and GT will be unveiled at Bathurst on October 7 and go on sale in Australia from next month. NZ pricing and availability should be announced shortly. Read the full story »

There aren’t many areas of motorsport left where the statement ‘Go hard, or go home’ still holds up, but one of those is the crazed hillbilly world of monster trucks.

Over in the States there is a full monster truck circuit of guys who get epic horsepower from their rear-wheel steering beasts. The top of this pile of misfits is naturally Bigfoot, who was responsible for setting a 202-foot, world record jump over a jetliner. No one could beat that right?

Well, Joe Sylvester, the 26-year-old driver of the Bad Habits truck thinks he can beat Bigfoot’s record.

So Sylvester set about building a truck and a ramp to embarrass Bigfoot’s record. Only problem was, things went all shades of bad in a practice session this week. After nailing his homemade ramp, the Bad Habits truck quickly began to turn nose down, and it wasn’t long before the machine evaporated into a cloud of giant tyres and red clay.

Sylvester was unharmed in the accident and still plans to officially attempt to break the record at an event this weekend.

Check out a video of the spill below. Read the full story »

Is this the cleanest engine bay in the world? This jaw-dropping Chevrolet C10 is featured in issue 65 of NZV8 magazine. The 1970 Stepside pickup makes 336kW – plenty enough to get loose.

The annual Petrolhead Fathers’ Day Drags is the biggest and fastest street car meet on the local drag racing calendar and it’s all on for this Sunday (Sept 5) at the Fram Autolite Dragway, Meremere.

Hosted by the American Muscle Car Club, it’s always well run and has become a must attend event, not just for dads but for everyone. There’s also a Thrill Performance top 8 shootout and, of course, a burnout comp because who doesn’t dig a big smokey burnout on a Sunday afternoon?

The competition has really heated up over the last few years, and we know there are a few drivers who are going to fight hard for this year’s title.

If you attend only one drag race meet this year, the Fathers’ Day Drags should be it.

Entry is $20 with kids under 12 rolling in for free. Gates open from 7am and qualifying begins at 10am.

If you’re driving around Auckland City this weekend be prepared to face serious delays on the Newmarket motorway viaduct. The Newmarket viaduct will be shut down this weekend to all southbound cars. It’s not great news considering it’s Father’s Day this Sunday, so if you have a family visit to make – choose a new route carefully.

Transit New Zealand says that this Sunday’s closure is likely to hit 80,000 cars. Southbound lanes will be closed all weekend (September 4 and 5) as the first major step in the $215 million viaduct upgrade project.

This weekend’s road works action is all about keeping the southbound lanes shut for 36 hours while the newly built section is prepared for use from next Monday (6 September). Some on-ramps in the area will be closed too, including Hobson and Khyber Pass as motorway managers try to limit the traffic getting around.

So what’s in it for me, you might ask? Well, from Monday the Newmarket viaduct will have four southbound lanes meaning traffic should flow better through the area.

The Newmarket Viaduct replacement work has been frustrating Aucklanders since June of last year but will ultimately lead to the southbound section widened to four lanes and the northbound section stay the same with three. The entire project is scheduled for completion in 2012.

If you want to learn more about the changes to the Newmarket Viaduct, click here to visit the NZTA website.

With six-second 200mph dreams but only a shoestring budget, Top Alcohol was the only way this team was ever going to race

What you see in these well-framed photographs is an alcohol-burning, supercharged and injected Funny Car, built and campaigned on a miniscule budget by Morice McMillin and Ryan Sheldon, who choose to race in one of the most competitive yet confusing classes in a sport full of confusing classes. And they’ve done well. By travelling around the country they racked up enough round wins to take third in the NZDRA National point score, and ran a best of 6.73 at 211mph in their first season of running the car.

It’s a twisted, convoluted tail, the evolution of this team, but they met up years back when they both ended up crewing on Mark Thomas’s Top Doorslammer ute. Ryan has been around drag racing his whole life. He crewed on Thomas’s little green lorry from its eight-second beginnings in Wild Bunch racing before trotting off to the US for a few years. When Ryan returned, it was with a plan to campaign his own Doorslammer, and he purchased the big ’59 Chev of Reagan Porter. He also slid right back into his former position on Blobby Thomas’s crew, and set about buying an engine he knew quite well, the alloy 532 KB Chev out of the ute.

New to team FatMan then was the gofer, a cheeky little runt named Morice McMillin, who had also been around the sport most of his young life, and had proved not only able to take the tons of verbal abuse heaped upon him, but more than capable of throwing a few barbs of his own.

After a couple of years of this fun, Morice’s dad, Noel (yep, he’s also spent donkeys’ years in the sport, especially in the thankless administration side), surprised everyone including himself by purchasing an old Mustang-bodied funny car. It hadn’t been on a track for about a decade and it needed a chassis upgrade (as in a new chassis), but hey, the price was right and the thing came complete, including an injected big block Chev.

Read the full story »