What happens when an Aussie puts a 1,000 horsepower twin-turbo Lexus V8 in a 1971 Toyota Celica, with GT-R all-wheel drive? You tear my brain in half. Also you top 306km/h in a 1,000-metre sprint.
This is Australian Jamie Heritage’s TA22 Celica. He initially built this car 10 years ago, eight of which he has said have been reliable. He started the build, with its twin-turbo 1UZ engine, as a rear-wheel drive runway racing machine.
But the lightweight Celica chassis couldn’t handle the power, so he cobbled together R34 GT-R gearsets and R33 GT-R diffs into a functioning GT-R AWD driveline. He also has a Holinger six-speed sequential transmission in there. I don’t know a lot about building fast cars, but I do know that one of those things will cost you something in the low five figures alone.
He has run a cool 311 kp/h (311km/h) in the 1000 meter sprint. This whole video was shot at one such event, the Snowy Mountains 1000, about an hour and a half south from Canberra.
Jamie seems happy with his car, but is still gunning to go faster, hopefully breaking the 322km/h figure at some point.