Thursday, January 03, 2008

Good Golly, Miss Molly.

G-Power is one of the lesser known (in comparison to Hamann or Hartge) BMW tuners in Germany. However, they appear to be putting out some pretty cool stuff. See, e.g., their new M5 Hurricane (also available in M6 guise). More details can be found here, but the important numbers are:
- twin-turbo, intercooled 5.0 liter V10
- 720 hp
- 517 lb-ft torque
- power to weight ratio of ~5.6
- governed to 211 mph
- claimed 0-60 4.2 seconds

In comparison, the stock M5 has a curb weight of 4012 pounds, and has a normally aspirated 5.0 liter V10 that puts out 500 horsepower and 383 lb-ft of torque. That puts the stock power to weight ratio at ~8.0—not too bad for a stock four door sedan.

An interesting side note here is a car that was announced last year. A company called Currency Motor Cars put out what they billed as the fastest M5 in the world. They also applied the twin-turbo treatment to their vehicle and came up with these numbers:
- 810 horsepower
- 733 lb-ft of torque
- curb weight of 4033 pounds
- power to weight ratio of ~5.0
In addition to the go-fast goodies, CMC also did a number to the interior, including such features as crocodile skin headrests, etc. They better have done something pretty damn cool to warrant the $250,000+ premium over a stock vehicle(!). Now, there appears to be some issue with the company. Their website is apparently down and has been for a few weeks at least (which is as long as I’ve been checking). This is, of course, just conjecture but perhaps they blew their wad on putting together their show car and didn’t have the market or other internal business infrastructure to back it up. Hmmm…

For those that are interested in that sort of thing G-Power has also crammed a M5/M6 V10 into an E46 M3 CSL. 3410 pounds, 542 horsepower, 428 lb-ft of torque, a power to weight ratio of ~6.3… Good golly is right!