Homemade GMC Syclone Makes More Power Than a Real One for the Price of an Old Civic
Spending $6,000 and your own time can get you an AWD street truck with a 4.5-second 0-60 time.
The GMC Syclone is a great underdog story of a working-class truck that was turned into a factory hot rod. It whooped exotic cars in the quarter-mile and zero-to-60 sprints with a turbocharged 4.3-liter V6 and all-wheel drive. The Syclone was a more affordable supercar slayer back in the '90s, but these days, you can spend new Corvette money on a clean one.
Or, you could be like Tony Angelo from the Stay Tuned channel on YouTube and build your own for about $6,000. He bought a "rust-free-ish" Chevy S10 and married it to an AWD Astro van drivetrain for $2,000 total, giving it the same V6 as a Syclone minus the turbo. The forced induction element was then taken care of with a $675 turbo kit from China, and now, the "Sike Clone" is ready for action.
We wrote about the first stage of the build in July, back when it was still being put together. Angelo has made some improvements in the time since ranging from a Corvette transmission servo to a side-exit exhaust. The goal all along was to at least match the factory Syclone's 280 horsepower and 350 pound-feet of torque at the crank, and now, the DIY creation has hit the dyno.
Angelo was stoked to report in his latest video that the Sike Clone has beat the power numbers of the real thing. Playing with the air-fuel mixture resulted in a best run of 265 horsepower and 370 pound-feet of torque at the wheels, meaning they're well past what the '90s street truck could manage in stock form. It's doing all this with low boost and a carburetor.
Another famous feat of the original Syclone's was the 4.3-second sprint to 60 mph. That was only ever accomplished by Car and Driver, who used a short rollout in its instrumented testing. Angelo says Syclone owners have reached out to him with claimed best times of 4.9 seconds, which is still plenty quick.
The Sike Clone did it in 4.58 seconds.
That means this rickety ol' thing zips to highway speeds quicker than a new Ford Super Duty with the high-output 6.7-liter Power Stroke. That truck makes 500 hp and 1,200 pound-feet of torque, but obviously, there's a lot more weight to lug around. It only gets better when you learn the HO engine is a $12,495 option, meaning the entire Sike Clone costs less than half of what the Super Duty's stoutest engine does on its own.
You can see that the fun-per-dollar ratio on this build is through the roof. Sure, it sounds like crap and looks about as good, but that only adds to it. I'd go this route in a hurry if all I cared about was speed—and for the same price as a ninth-gen Civic with 200,000 miles, it's mighty tempting.
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