We already were huge fans of the Hoonicorn ever since it was debuted and really what’s not to love about it. It’s pretty much the perfect package, it’s a muscle car and a popular one at that, it has been fitted with an all-wheel drive system, and it has a naturally aspirated Roush-Yates V8 producing 845hp. Ken Block and the brilliant minds of Hoonigan Racing went made the Hoonicorn even better when they strapped two massive turbos under the hood, well technically not under because they pop their pretty little heads right up through the hood which, of course, is a spectacular display.
Photo: hooniganracing
When Block debuted the new Hoonicorn V2 he hinted towards a new project he was working on where he needed “more horsepower” which of course made us all excited. I mean what could possibly require more than 850hp? Well, he said he was going to be releasing a teaser that would reveal exactly what that project would be and as a man of his word he did just that. Its a new twist on his ridiculously popular Gymkhana videos and he’s calling it “Climbkhana”. Which is very fitting because he’s taking the Hoonicorn V2 out to Colorado to tackle the one and only Pikes Peak Hillclimb course!
Why we didn’t think of that earlier is beyond me, I mean of course you need more horsepower when you’re virtually climbing a mountain. The Pikes Peak hill climb course is a 12.42 mile stretch of road that climbs 4,720 verticle feet (1,440 meters) that consists of 156 turns. It’s the ultimate test for man and machine because the finish line is at the top of the mountain which sits at 14,110 feet of horsepower robbing elevation.
The air so substantially thinner than lower elevations and air, of course, is very important for producing horsepower. Even the mighty Hoonicorn with its near perfect V8 would be not even half as powerful at the top as it would be at “normal” elevations, if not less due to the naturally aspirated aspect. The only way to overcome this is by adding forced induction like a turbo or two. That’s basically the idea of a turbo is to force more air into the engine to create more power, it’s obviously more complicated than that but you get the point.
So now it’s all starting to make sense why Ken needed that extra boost of power, pun intended. As he mentioned in the debut video of the Hoonicorn V2 they’re claiming the car makes just over 1,400hp right now but has the potential for much more. But we thought that’s a very fitting output because the Pikes Peak Course climbs 1,440 meters so its perfect, 1,400hp for 1,400 meters. Unfortunately, Climbkhana won’t debut until summer of 2017 which is somewhat of a bummer. But at least we a have a winter full of snowmobiling to keep occupied in the meantime.