I scrapped the original driveline, then hauled the car to Lingenfelter Performance Engineering, where I asked project director Jason Haines if he could assemble a dead-reliable small-block producing, say, 400 horsepower and 430 pound-feet of torque at about 4400 rpm. This was like asking the Pentagon if it could come up with a starter’s pistol.
What Jason suggested was a bored-and-stroked gen-three LQ4 displacing 415 cubic inches. It has CNC-ported aluminum heads, forged rods and pistons, Corvette injectors, a Lingenfelter cam, and the TrailBlazer SS’s exhaust, with that one huge cannon of an exhaust tip. It scrapes all road imperfections, shooting sparks. Atop the V-8 rests a black, powder-coated air intake that is scalloped to look like Batman’s toaster. The engine was then mated to a 4L60E automatic.
“Will this be reliable?” I asked.
“It’s designed to last 400 to 800 hours at wide-open throttle,” he replied.
“I don’t have that much time,” I said.
“This car leaves hard,” Jason added. “Be careful you don’t leave something behind. Like your differential.”
. . .
I handed the keys to our tech department. They recorded a 0-to-60 sprint of 5.0 seconds and a quarter-mile dash of 13.5 seconds at 106 mph, creating quite a mellow bellow in the process. This means my Caprice is 0.1 second quicker than that modern paradigm of hot-rod wagons, the Dodge Magnum SRT8, and 0.1 quicker than a Porsche Boxster S, which I could probably stow in the Caprice’s third-row seat.
I’m embarrassed to calculate fuel mileage. The car weighs 4307 pounds—lighter than the SRT8, oddly enough, but sufficient to create ruts when the pavement is scorching hot.