Toyota 86 rattles

A 220-mph Land Cruiser, 86 cup car, monster Tacoma, racy Prius, weird Corolla, and "extreme" minivan round out this year’s offerings. When it comes to big automakers like Toyota , SEMA can often be a smorgasbord of weird and wonderful stuff. This year, for example, Toyota is displaying 30 vehicles, some of which honor the past, while others point to the future or just show how crazy the tuners can get. Six “extreme builds” are featured this year, and four are entered into SEMA’s Battle Of The Builders competition. Let’s take a look at each, below. Make sure you click the images to launch individual galleries of each car, and scroll all the way down for videos of the SEMA creations, too. Twin-Turbo Land Speed Cruiser First of all, the thought of driving a 200-mile-per-hour Land Cruiser is terrifying . That thing can barely handle 80 mph, let alone 200-plus. Nevertheless, a pair of Garrett turbos are slapped onto the 5.7-liter V8 for a huge bump in power, and … [Read more...] about Behold the glory and awfulness of Toyota’s SEMA customs

Smith and Ghiotto will join six other drivers split across the pair of works Team LNT Ginetta G60-LT-P1s at the WEC Prologue test at the Circuit de Catalunya this week. Ginetta boss Lawrence Tomlinson said he had brought in Smith, who first sampled the Ginetta at Paul Ricard earlier this month, for his experience. "Guy has a lot to offer, not just as the 2003 Le Mans winner with Bentley but for the amount of knowledge of sportscar racing he has," Tomlinson told Motorsport.com. Smith, who stepped down from the factory Bentley GT3 squad in May last year, played down the likelihood of him racing the car. "It's not really my plan, but I was curious to see how the cars had moved on," said the 44-year-old, who last raced at prototype with Dyson Racing in the American Le Mans Series in 2013. "Lawrence asked me to have a go, and I thought why not?" #7 Bentley Team M-Sport Bentley Continental GT3: Guy Smith Photo by: Alexander Trienitz Tomlinson explained that … [Read more...] about Ghiotto, Smith headline eight-man Ginetta test roster

It has dethroned the 230-mph Toyota Land Cruiser. In case you have not heard of Severn Valley Motorsport, it’s a tuning company based in the United Kingdom specialized in upgrading Nissan GT-Rs. Godzilla’s engine was used for a pet project some years ago when the engineers decided to cram it into the engine bay of a first-generation Nissan Qashqai (current model sold in the U.S. as the Rouge Sport ). Thus, the Qashqai-R was born, complete with 1,100 horsepower and just about the same amount of torque. That was back in 2014 when Top Gear magazine wrote an article about the supercar-engined compact crossover, but since then the vehicle has gone through even more upgrades. The tuner says the Qasqhai’s “heavily forged engine” now packs a new turbo kit enabling an incredible output of 2,000 horsepower. Why? SVM wanted to claim the title for the fastest SUV in the world, which up until yesterday was held by Toyota and its bonkers 2,000-hp Land Cruiser with a velocity of 230 … [Read more...] about 2,000-HP Nissan Qashqai Becomes Fastest SUV In The World: 237.8 MPH