10 Times Ordinary Cars Were Equipped With Extraordinary Engines

Supercars and sports cars are great. But we expect them to be fitted with big horsepower motors and exotic tech. When they aren't, the results are often very disappointing. On the other hand, run-of-the-mill family cars and SUVs like the sensible, non-M BMW X5 are expected to have fuel-efficient engines that deliver the bare minimum of driving enjoyment.

That's why it is quite an exciting moment when you stumble across one that has a massive V8 or race-bred V12 lurking under its hood. Sometimes, there's little more than a nice set of wheels or a body kit to give the game away. In other cases, the entire car has been transformed into a muscle-bulging version of its wimpy stablemates, ready for a fight. We found some of the craziest examples of ordinary cars that were fitted with extraordinary engines and delved into why they were built in the first place.

Alfa Romeo 147 GTA

2000-2010

The 147 was a typically stylish small family car fitted with a range of peppy and economical enginesjust the sort of thing that Alfa Romeo used to excel at. Then there was the 147 GTA. This 247-hp road rocket had a 3.2-liter V6 shoe-horned under the hood. It turned the 147 into a very rapid machine, but despite its stunning looks and awesome sound, putting all that power through just the front wheels meant a lot of time was spent trying to mitigate the horrendous torque steer.

Aston Martin Cygnet V8

2018

The original Cygnet was a cynical attempt at trying to meet strict manufacturer emissions regulations by dressing up a Toyota iQ (one of the most innovative Toyota's ever) with a different grille and acres of leather and then calling it an Aston Martin. The marketing blurb called it 'a luxury solution to urban mobility.' But at three times the price of a mechanically identical iQ, few Aston owners were convinced to part with their cash.

However, one Cygnet owner turned his dinky little city car into a genuine Aston by commissioning the company to fit a proper 4.7-liter V8 under its tiny hood. The result was a warp-speed luxury urban mobility solution, and the car that Aston Main should have built in the first place. The Cygnet V8 remains a one-off.

Audi Q7 V12

2007-2015

The first generation Audi Q7 was a big old bus like most early German SUVs. It had plenty of luxury and tech to wow customers with, and a variety of powerful V6 and V8 engines to make short work of the hefty curb weight. But for those wanting a little bit more, there was the insane Q7 V12. Fitted with a 6.0-liter twin-turbo diesel engine, it produced more torque than most supercars, and would lurch to 62 mph in a scary 5.5-seconds.

Why would the logical Germans, especially Audi, do this? Well, during the early 2000s, diesel-powered Audi race cars were doing rather well, and it seemed logical to fit a road car with a similar engine to show their technological prowess. Being a diesel, you would expect good fuel economy, and the claimed 25 mpg average isn't half bad, but we bet that figure would quickly drop into single digits if you used all that power regularly.

BMW X5 V12 Le Mans

2001

M-badged BMW X5s have been around for a long time, and the BMW XM is a fully-fledged M car, but back in the early 2000s, even the idea of a BMW SUV was a hard thing to accept. To make their core customers more at home with the relatively new X5, and to showcase its dynamic abilities, BMW decided to fit one with the 6.1-liter V12 from the Le Mans winning McLaren F1.

Without the power-sapping restrictors of the race car, the engine produced 700 instead of 580 hp. In keeping with the race car theme, the X5 Le Mans was also fitted with proper brakes and suspension, and it lapped the Nrburgring in a rapid 7 minutes and 42.25 seconds. An SUV record that stood for almost 20 years.

Ford Sapphire 5.0 V8

1984-1988

In the 1970s and 1980s, South Africa experienced a boom in its local racing scene. This resulted in several homologated road cars designed to beat the competition at all costs. This resulted in some great models like the BMW 530 MLE, Alfa Romeo Giulietta Group 1, and Fiat 131 2000 Racing. All worthy of inclusion here, but we went with the hairy Ford XR8 thanks to its Mustang-derived V8. This model was based on the standard 3.0-liter V6 Ford Sierra, with modifications to the engine bay, transmission, differential and driveshaft so that nothing exploded when all that extra torque made its way to the rear tires. Just 252 cars were built, and only a handful were ever exported.

Lancia Thema 8.32

1987-1992

The Lancia Thema was a solid and capable European family car that shared its underpinnings with the Saab 9000 and Alfa Romeo 164. It was refined and, in 2.0-liter turbocharged form, pretty quick, too. But it wouldn't be a true Italian car if it didn't have some outlandish feature or mad technical innovation, and in this case, it came in the form of the Thema 8.32. This range-topper used the 3.2-liter V8 engine out of the Ferrari 328, with some minor changes to make it more suitable for a luxury sedan. It used a cross instead of a flat-plane crank, which lowered peak power but made it smoother and torquier. It also featured an automatic rear wing, a first for a road car.

Mercedes B55 AMG

2010

What you are looking at here is a V8-powered rear-wheel drive Mercedes with tire-shredding performance. That is a pretty standard recipe for most AMG Mercs these days, but this isn't an AMG model; it started off life as a front-wheel-drive diesel city car. That's a pretty amazing transformation, even more so when you find out that it was the work of a group of Mercedes trainees. According to contemporary road tests, it drove very well and sounded amazing, but sadly, the B55 remained a one-off project.

Nissan Juke-R

2011

The Nissan Juke-R may have been a marketing exercise, but who cares when it's this cool? From the outside, it looks like someone spent their life savings on the most extreme body kit available for the Juke. But it is under that tiny little hood where the magic is. This pint-sized city car was fitted with the twin-turbo 3.8-liter V6 from the Nissan GT-R, including its dual-clutch transmission and associated running gear. It was no small job to get it all to fit - the prop shaft had to be shortened, and the bodywork widened to accommodate the GT-R's wheels and brakes. The rear seats were removed, and a roll cage and racing front seats were also installed. It may have never been intended for production, but the two Juke-Rs built were road-legal and were apparently sold to the same customer. Nissan repeated the trick a few years later with the Juke-R 2.0, but this time they cranked the power up to 600 hp.

Renault 5 Turbo

1980-1984

All the best road cars stem from racing homologation requirements. The Renault 5 Turbo proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt. The tiny little front-wheel drive Renault 5 was launched in 1972 as an affordable city car and fitted with engines ranging as small as 0.8 liters. A turbocharged 110 hp Alpine Turbo was also offered, but the real star of the show was the unhinged Renault 5 Turbo.

This model was completely re-engineered to be competitive in the Group 3 categories of the world rally championships. This entailed moving the engine behind the driver, where it would power the rear wheels, and fitting a range of beefed-up components from other Renault models to cope with the additional power. Once the homologation requirements were met, a further batch of slightly less extreme models were built, called the Turbo 2. Both remain some of the maddest road-legal Renaults ever built.

Volkswagen Golf GTI W12-650

2007

Volkswagen is great at building solid and dependable family cars. But occasionally, the VW engineers must feel the need to let their creative talents loose, and the results are often quite spectacular. The VW Golf GTI W12-650 was one of these cars. It was designed as a one-off concept car to be the center attraction at the 2007 Worthersee VW festival.

The base car was a Mk5 GTI, and its doors, hood, and lights were retained. Just about every other part was completely re-engineered. The 6.0-liter W12 engine was borrowed from the Bentley Continental GT, the front brakes off an RS4, and the transmission was a VW Phaeton unit. The rear axle and brakes were Lamborghini Gallardo parts, and then there was that awesome body kit. Claimed to be capable of 201 mph, this may well remain the fastest GTI ever.

Sources: Alfa Romeo, Aston Martin, Audi, BMW, Ford, Lancia, Mercedes, Nissan, Renault, VW