You may remember a fun little hatchback called the Fiat Panda 100HP. All it took was a hundred horsepower to turn a ho-hum supermini into what European editors knew and loved as one of their favorite driving machines. That was a little overshadowed by the Fiat 500 that offers the same powertrain, if not all the same fun, but the Panda put things into perspective. Especially considering now how one tuner has taken an earlier Fiat Coupe and squeezed a whopping 1,000 horsepower out of it. That's ten times as much.
So how'd they do it? Well, for starters they scrapped the stock engine and shoehorned in the twin-turbo V6 from the Mitsubishi 300GT VR-4. Advanced though it was for its time, with its 24 valves and dual overhead cams, the Diamond Star engine never produced more than 300 horsepower in stock form. So the tuner performed some undisclosed magic on it and boosted the output up over three times its stock figure.
While they were at it, they also squeezed the Mitsu's advanced all-wheel-drive, four-wheel-steering system in there. Because as bonkers as 1,000 horsepower is by any account, trying to keep that much twist on the straight and narrow when it's just driving the front wheels would be a nightmare. This, on the other hand, is clearly someone's dream come true. Check it out in the trio of videos after the jump.
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