AMS Alpha 12 Nissan GT-R: Breaking Down a 10 Second 1/4 Mile - Ignition Episode 51
On this episode of Ignition
Transcript
00:00 This week on Ignition, one of the fastest street-legal GT-Rs in the world.
00:29 From first look, the most impressive thing about this GT-R is how unassuming it looks.
00:34 Sure, you might notice bits of carbon fiber, the new wheels and brakes, but nothing about
00:38 this car's exterior speaks to its capabilities.
00:42 The same is true when you pop the hood.
00:44 You might see the new blow-off valves, the new plumbing, but mostly, it looks stock.
00:49 This car, though, is the AMS Alpha 12, and it can make upwards of 1,500 horsepower.
00:55 To find out how, we talked to the team that built it.
00:59 Chicago-based AMS has been tuning GT-Rs extensively ever since they arrived on our soil.
01:04 All right, so Martin, tell me about the goal for the Alpha 12.
01:08 The goal is basically to build the best supercar we could, starting off with the Nissan GT-R,
01:13 which is already an incredible car, and virtually doubling the horsepower on the car.
01:20 So whereas the stock car makes 530 horsepower, this thing now, on pumped gas, makes about
01:25 1,100 horsepower.
01:26 But that's not the only range.
01:27 If you put race fuel into it, what can it make?
01:30 Race fuel, about 1,500 horsepower.
01:33 So making that kind of power, you're going to run into difficulties.
01:36 What were some of the difficulties putting that power to the ground, or at least making
01:39 it in the first place?
01:40 Well, you know, the car's designed, obviously, for a much lower power level, so there's really
01:45 three things that came into play.
01:47 Drive train, so transmission, the engine, and also the electronics.
01:51 So again, it still looks stock underneath the hood, but it's obvious there's a lot of
01:56 work has been performed here.
01:58 What were some of the difficulties in making double the horsepower with this engine?
02:03 First of all, we try to integrate everything so it looks OEM.
02:06 All the components, they don't look like, hey, it's a modified car.
02:08 We kind of, along with the fitment, the wiring, the look of the parts, try to make it look
02:13 like it belongs.
02:14 The difficulty with the engine was, once we started making a ton of torque, obviously
02:19 the parts aren't designed to handle that.
02:21 So along with the common stuff that we do, like the rods, the pistons we had custom made,
02:25 we actually ran into issues where we were actually splitting a block in half with so
02:28 much torque, and I think that was around 1,000 foot-pounds of torque.
02:33 You have your own ECU in there, or not your own, but a new ECU.
02:35 Yes.
02:36 How does that work?
02:37 It's from a company called Cyvex out of Europe, and it replaces the factory ECU.
02:42 Obviously, it makes the engine run, but it also keeps everything else happy, which is
02:45 a pretty daunting task.
02:47 I mean, to integrate an aftermarket standalone ECU with this car was pretty challenging.
02:53 The cool part about it is you can do a lot of stuff with this ECU that you can't do with
02:56 the stock ECU.
02:57 Really?
02:58 Like a rolling anti-lag start, launch control with selectable different RPMs, any of the
03:03 maps, traction control, you can change it on the fly.
03:06 So if you're on a track, you can select if it starts raining, you can turn on different
03:09 levels of traction control.
03:10 And that's all controlled through the infotainment system, that big display in the center?
03:13 Yes, basically, yeah.
03:14 That's very cool, very cool.
03:15 Well, what initially brought you to the GT-R?
03:17 The potential, really.
03:18 I mean, you know, twin turbos.
03:21 I mean, everything we've done in the past has always been turbocharged.
03:24 Okay.
03:25 You know, it's relatively, if you know what you're doing, relatively easy to make horsepower
03:28 on.
03:29 So I saw the potential.
03:30 All-wheel drive platform, twin turbo V6, you know, a sophisticated chassis, so that's really
03:35 what did it.
03:36 There's a little bit of room for improvement, I bet.
03:37 Yeah.
03:38 I doubt it.
03:39 Well, very cool.
03:40 I can't wait to get it running.
03:41 Of course, the biggest question is, how fast is it?
03:54 All right, yeah, we are all ready.
04:03 Go, go, go.
04:10 Go.
04:12 Without the aid of traction adding spray that you'd use at a drag strip, the Alcantara
04:32 12 had a difficult time hooking up.
04:35 Still, on street tires, it reached 60 miles an hour in 2.7 seconds, and a quarter mile
04:40 in 10 seconds flat at 146.7 miles an hour.
04:47 Despite being, at this point, one of the quickest accelerating cars Motor Trend has ever tested,
04:52 we wanted to go faster.
04:54 So on went drag radials, which allowed us to launch at a higher RPM.
04:59 Traction was still an issue, but during the best run, the Alfa 12 hit 60 miles an hour
05:03 in 2.5 seconds, and the quarter mile in 9.8 seconds at 148.3 miles an hour.
05:11 That's certainly fast, but what does a sub 10 second quarter run entail?
05:16 What does it require from a car with a full interior, navigation, and even Bluetooth?
05:21 Horsepower is the obvious answer, and the AMS has lots of it.
05:26 But that power must be applied to the ground.
05:28 The Alfa 12 starts this process by launching at 4,100 RPM, with the turbos only wheezing
05:34 out 5 PSI.
05:36 This is because at launch, the grippy M&H RaceMaster slicks, even though the rear tires
05:42 are over a foot wide each.
05:43 They can't take the full power from the engine.
05:47 Up to and through second gear, the GT-R is averaging 1G longitudinally.
05:52 If you push the Alfa 12 out of a plane, it would plunge to the earth at the same rate.
05:57 The transmission, strengthened to endure the stresses of up to 1,500 horsepower, shifts
06:02 hard, chirping the tires on each gear change.
06:06 After each shift, revs fall to around 6,000 RPM, keeping the engine on a healthy part
06:11 of its power band and on a diet of 22 pounds of boost all the way to its 8,000 RPM red
06:16 line.
06:17 That's 1,000 RPM higher than stock.
06:20 It finishes the run in 9.8 seconds, in that time the crank has spun 1,091 times, or just
06:27 over 111 times per second.
06:30 It's truly hard to appreciate just how fast this Alfa 12 is until you give it context
06:35 by comparing it to a stock GT-R.
06:39 Notice that the rate of acceleration doesn't differ until around 45 miles an hour.
06:44 In fact, both cars reach 30 miles an hour in 1.1 seconds.
06:48 This shows that even with drag radials and all-wheel drive, there's a limit on how much
06:52 power you can transfer to the ground.
06:55 There's a stark difference, though, once the Alfa 12 gets into second gear.
06:59 As the GT-R peters off, the Alfa 12 finally gets full boost.
07:04 The AMS reaches 100 miles an hour two seconds before the stock car does, and 0.7 second
07:10 before the last Bugatti Veyron we tested.
07:13 But what this data doesn't convey is how long it takes your brain to realize what's just
07:18 happened.
07:19 You focus so intently on hitting shifts, making careful steering corrections, that your brain
07:24 can't be concerned with anything else.
07:26 It was such that while the AMS passed the quarter at 148 miles an hour, I kept my foot
07:32 in it until 177 miles an hour.
07:35 Part of it was not realizing the run was over.
07:38 The other part was, well, when you're driving one of the fastest street-legal GT-Rs in the
07:42 world, wouldn't you?
07:43 [engine revving]
07:48 [music]
07:52 [music]
07:56 [music]
08:00 [music]
08:08 [music]
08:14 [music]