We got a bit excited recently by HKS’s in-development stroker kit for the Toyota GR Yaris’ 1.6-litre G16E-GTS three-cylinder turbo engine, and that’s before even knowing what sort of power it might be making.
HKS isn’t the only company doing wild things with the engine, though. Over in Australia, tuning company Lamspeed Racing has just managed to squeeze a power output from the tiny triple that would embarrass most supercars.
The magic figure is 888hp, or 876bhp. That’s the power the engine was making with the car sat on a hub dyno, meaning it was being measured at the wheels’ hubs. Factoring in the drivetrain loss, Lamspeed reckons the engine could be making over 1000bhp at the crank. Just to reiterate, this is a three-cylinder, 1.6-litre engine. It also made 574lb ft of torque – not insignificant for a three-banger.
It’s hard to pin down a list of exactly what’s been done to this engine to make it produce such lofty power numbers, but Lamspeed offers a whole host of bits for the G16E, including but far from limited to forged pistons, uprated cylinder heads and a massive Garrett turbo kit. We have to assume its development car is packing pretty much everything, plus the associated bits needed to make the gearbox cope with all that power.
The company already holds various GR Yaris-related world records, including the one for the fastest quarter-mile drag strip run the little hatchback has clocked, a 9.8-second, 142mph pass. That was the same car, and the same engine, that’s now been able to push out this ludicrous number.
Lamspeed says it plans to continue developing the GR Yaris platform, so we could eventually see this sort of setup offered to the public. Between that and the HKS crate engine with F1-style pre-chamber combustion, we’re beginning to see some remarkable things get achieved with this little motor.
