In July of last year, we told you about the madman who was building a Toyota Prius for drag racing. Well, now it’s mostly finished and it’s blowing the doors off the competition.
If you don’t remember the PriuSRT8, it’s not your ordinary hybrid. For starters, Nick Filippides from American Racing Headers took a 2005 Prius and stuffed in the 6.2-liter engine from a Challenger Hellcat.
Apparently, a 707hp V8 wasn’t quite enough though. To bump up the power even more, he replaced the supercharger with a bigger Whipple unit. The result? 800 ponies. That’s a far cry from Filippides’ 1,000hp goal, but the car is still a work in progress.
So how did Filippides come up with the idea for this ridiculous car? According to an interview on Jay Leno’s Garage, it was a way to drive in the high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lane on the Long Island Expressway.
This is something I concocted just driving on the Long Island Expressway and having the HOV lane and sitting in bumper to bumper traffic and just watching the conga line of Prius going by. So I said you know what? One of these days I’m going to get one of these cars and put it on that lane.
No word on whether or not Filippides took in the HOV lane or not, but we’re guessing probably not since it’s no longer a green car. Well, it is a green car, but just not eco-friendly kind.
The PriuSRT8 did make a racing debut back in early May too, at the Modern Street HEMI Shootout in Rockingham, North Carolina. Even with some setbacks, including a bent valve spring, the car broke into the nines with ease.
The best pass of the day ended with a 9.38 at 147mph. However, with some more tuning Filippides believes the car will break into the eights.
To put this into perspective, this time is slightly quicker than the 9.65 at 140mph of the Dodge Demon. It’s also quicker than the self-proclaimed “World’s Fastest Muscle Car”, the Hennessey Exorcist. However, with a price tag for the build north of both those cars, the PriuSRT8 isn’t exactly a giant-killer…
If you want to see the runs for yourself, we’ve included the video below:
