World’s Quickest Acura Integra Does Quarter-Mile in 7.7 Seconds at 195 MPH
Owner Myles Kerr bought the car as a bone-stock 1994 model in 2006.
Equipped with a spunky 1.8-liter VTEC making 170 horsepower and 128 pound-feet of torque, the 1994 Acura Integra GS-R was what Car and Driver’s Brock Yates proclaimed “a marvel.”
“If Porsche built this it would cost $65,000, smell like leather, have a sleek exterior, and R&T would treat it like the second coming of Dr. Ferdinand himself,” Yates said.
That wasn’t enough for English Racing’s Myles Kerr and his ’94 Integra, which he bought in 2006. With countless hours of work, Kerr’s 1,500-horsepower “Gringotegra” specializes in the half-mile on no-prep tracks. Now, Kerr can hit 195 mph in the quarter-mile in a blazing 7.715 seconds and even kisses 216 mph in the half-mile. In this unusual Integra, Kerry set a world record, hitting 213.9 mph when the Integra was a front-wheel drive car. It’s no longer front-wheel drive, as Kerr transformed it into an all-wheel drive car about two years ago.
English Racing, self-described as a performance workshop developing high performance and world-record-breaking custom builds, is the proud home of this Integra, which is a methanol-breathing machine making 1,500 hp at the wheels. And it’s street-legal.
This particular Integra is no racetrack princess; Kerr drags it on the strip and still drives it to the grocery store on a regular basis. He won $10,000 last March at the TX2K23 drag race in the Stick Shift class at Houston Raceway.
In a video from Top Gear BBC, Kerr shows off the Integra’s track abilities. It’s obnoxiously, gloriously loud. As the Integra whips down the stretch, host Rob Dahm notes that Kerr has a two-stage clutch system, giving him a lot of control. Although it sounds like Kerr is roasting the tires, the car is tuned to avoid exactly that.
The car was stolen from a mall parking lot in 2007. Two days later, he got a call from the police saying his car was found. On the positive side, the engine was still there as well as the transmission. Unfortunately, however, the steering column was busted and it was totaled. He got $6,000 for the car and bought it back for $243.
That’s when Kerr bought the Integra's first turbo kit.
“When I first put a turbo kit on this car, I only wanted 280 horsepower to the tires,” Kerr told Dragzine. “That lasted about three months, then I wanted more and more horsepower. Along the way, I found the limits of things like engines, transmissions, axles, and differentials. You name it, I found a way to break it ... It wasn’t until my first half-mile event and then TX2K event that I really decided to take the car to a higher level."
The Integra revs to 11,000 right now, which Kerr says isn’t high for a Honda vehicle. It retains a factory rocker arm and has a three-lobe cam, and idles at 1,100 rpm. Kerr fully expects the car to blow up at some point. It’s punching above its power grade with no signs of slowing down.
(CORRECTION 2/3/24 3:40 PM ET - The 1994 Acura Integra GS-R original specs show the factory engine was good for 170 hp and 128 lb-ft of torque. The Drive regrets the error.)
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