The V12 is a pinnacle of engines, almost exclusively reserved for luxury cars and exotic sports cars. As such, its rare you find one built like a real hot rod, with lumpy cams and all. That’s why this Nissan Silvia drift car with a very custom Toyota 1GZ is so exciting. Well, that and how amazing it sounds.
The 1GZ only came in the Toyota Century, about as low-key as an application is going to get.
But this one is in Jaron Olivecrona’s pro drift car for D1NZ down in New Zealand, which got written up in Speedhunters the other week. It’s an interesting car, but Toyota V12 swaps aren’t the most uncommon thing and I kind of forgot about it.
Then I looked up how it sounds.
Oh.
Hell.
Yes.
Listen to this thing!
It’s super choppy at idle and completely wails up high.
Let’s hear some more raw sound of it at full rip:
And now let’s hear just a bit more of this thing running out to the limiter:
This is all thanks to work done by Hartley, the same Hartley that does those motorcycle-based V8s. Here’s what Speedhunters explained about the internal changes:
Of course, it goes without saying that the top end of the V12 now features a heavily reworked, CNC-ported cylinder head. ‘Reworked’ is something of an understatement, with no component beneath the billet cam covers remaining factory. The valves, cams, lifters and cam gears are entirely custom, designed from scratch and engineered by Hartley. No, he’s not about to divulge all the vitals, but freely admits the 5.0-litre, 12-cylinder “air pump” is capable of shifting considerably more atmosphere into the suck, squeeze, bang, blow process.
Argh. Y’all. It’s so good.