Our friend Gordon Tronson is at it again, this time with a twin-engine Corvette that puts out about 1,300 horsepower and is fittingly dubbed the “Super Super Car.”
The automotive world has been buzzing about Tronson’s latest build since it appeared in the AMSOIL booth at a recent Hot August Nights event. Several outlets have posted articles, with bloggers from as far away as Germany reaching out to the New Zealand native and current Las Vegas car builder for details.
Check out Tronson’s “Super Super Car” for Yourself
And take a listen to it here.
Why all the fuss?
Take a look in the engine compartment. That’s not one but two 640-horsepower LT4 engines lowered into the tube chassis. While GM finally introduced a mid-engine Corvette in 2019, Tronson took it a step further and placed a pair of engines behind the driver. If the mid-engine C8 Corvette could make the splash it did back then, it stands to reason Tronson’s creation will generate twice the excitement.
The Latest in a Line of Iconic Builds
If Gordon Tronson’s name isn’t familiar to you, his one-of-a-kind builds surely are.
You may have seen his 1932 roadster named “Double Trouble,” which features four superchargers atop a pair of V-8 engines. Or, maybe, you’ve seen his homemade Lamborghini Countach. Years ago, he built several that were so realistic, the lawyers from Lambo slapped him with a $5 million lawsuit.
Tronson’s talents aren’t reserved to the four-wheeled world. Check out his custom motorcycle powered by a quartet of V-twin engines.
Get the full story and find out what makes Tronson tick in the video.
Video transcript: Company of Enthusiasts: We’re into Awesome
[ Music ] My name’s Gordon Tronson, and I am into building one of’s. We’re in Henderson, Nevada, and we’re at my shop where all kinds of cool things happen. I was born in New Zealand and, in a nutshell, I always wanted a Mustang*; and the only way to get one was to come to North America. So in my 20s I immigrated to Canada, and that really was because I wanted a Mustang.
Two weeks later, arriving in Canada I actually did buy a Mach I 351 Cleveland Fastback. I’m not sure why I had a passion for American muscle, but I do remember working in an engineering shop and I got to work on a Ford* Mainline. Of course, it had a V8 in it, and once I really found out what V8s were all about then I was stricken. I mean, that was it.
It was all over. What we got here is a 1929 Model A Rat Rod, and it’s about as ratty as you can get. Started out with just a bare shell. I built a tube frame for it, stuck in the double overhead cam, 4-valve, super-charged Ford motor, period-correct rocket magnesium wheels.
Last time I showed this, took first place, which is kind of cool. Pretty much everything around here I keep. I’ve kind of been known for that, not to sell anything. I’ve fallen in love with all of them.
What we got here is a 1953 Ford Ranch Wagon, two-door. Most of the floor’s missing so I’m not sure what we’re going to do with this, if we’re going to restore it or just take the body off and plunk it on something later. Well, believe it or not, I actually have a real job. I have my own business.
It’s telecommunications which I’ve been doing pretty much all my life so being a gear head was actually a hobby. Most of my builds are done within a year, year and a half, and chances are while I’m doing that one I’m already thinking about building the next one. What we’re looking at right here is a ’57 Chevy* four-door. A little bit of an interesting story: I got this at an auction.
Somebody took out all the windows and beat the thing up with a baseball bat, and I got it at a pretty good price and, of course, rebuilt it all and put it all back together. So here I am in Las Vegas, Nevada, and I’m collecting a few cars here and there and always wanted something that nobody else had. So I came up with this brainstorm to put twin engines in a roadster, and that’s what I call Double Trouble. What we got here is actually one of my kind of unusual first creations.
This is a ’32 Roadster sitting on a tube chassis. And, of course, the beauty of this thing is it’s got twin V8s in it. So shortly after that I actually mentioned it to a friend of mine that owns a motorcycle shop. I said, Yeah.
I’m going to build a four-engine Harley* motorcycle, and he’s like, Yeah, right. So that was it. So I had to. I bought the motors brand new.
That’s how I started the bike. I actually bought four RevTech V-twin engines that are 100 cubic inch, 100 horsepower each and put all four on a bench and then built the chassis or frame around them, literally. What’s interesting about that, quite an engineering feat. The two engines on the left actually run backwards, and that was no easy task.
Took a little while to get it but probably the only two V-twin engines in the whole entire world that run backwards. While I was in Canada I — of course I saw my first Lamborghini Countach in a magazine and that was just over the top. I thought that was the most beautiful, coolest car on the planet. And of course the price tag on those things even back then was way, way, way out of my reach.
So I did what any other Kiwi would do. I just built my own damned Lamborghini. So, believe it or not, this here is a Lamborghini Countach. I actually went to a toy store and bought a 12-scale model.
And I took it home and I took a pair of dividers and started measuring all the dimensions of the car and drew it up on paper. And the next thing I know I’m building a wooden Lamborghini actually, a complete car pretty much out of wood and body filler, plywood. And that’s really what gives you the buck to make the fiberglass molds. What you do is you bolt everything together, flip it upside down, polish the hell out of it, shoot a gel coat and then you lay your fiberglass.
And then when it cures you take it apart and then you’ve got a body completely finished. It went so well, actually, I had a lot of people wanted to buy kits from me, buy cars. So back in the ’90s that’s what I was doing. I was actually building Lamborghini replicas and built about ten of them.
And things were going great until some guy walked in and served me with a $5 million lawsuit to quit doing it, so that was the end of that. At nighttime it’s easy for me to fall asleep. Instead of counting sheep, I just work on the next project and that pretty well puts me to sleep. If you’ve got one super-charged engine, why not have four?
So what we’ve got here is a ’62 Ford Econoline. There’s four 4.6 Ford Double Overhead Cam, 4-valve supercharged engines, probably making about 4000 horsepower. There’s a great saying that Enzo Ferrari said one time. Somebody was interviewing him, and they asked Enzo Ferrari, What is your favorite Ferrari?
And he replied, he says, The next one I build. And I’ve always followed that I always — I think that’s where I’m at. Of course, the Lamborghini is probably the number one. [ Car Engine ] [ Music ]
Twin-Engine Corvette 20 Years in the Making
While Tronson spent about a three and a half years building his “Super Super Car,” the idea had been percolating for at least 20 years. He saw a sketch of a concept car that featured similar elongated, fluid lines in an art magazine. The idea struck him so deeply that he hung the sketch in his garage and determined to one day build a similar car.
Leap ahead about 20 years and it was time to start building. But fabricating the car from scratch would have taken five years, Tronson said. He compromised by selecting the perfect donor car.
“I started with a 2001 C5 Corvette that was scrapped after having been flooded during Hurricane Katrina,” he said. Tronson chopped off the front and rear ends, leaving essentially just the original cockpit.
He then welded together a tube chassis to complete the frame, adding extra space in the rear to house the two radiators that cool the supercharged LT4 engines. As Tronson has found with other cars, like his Lamborghini Diablo, the radiators must have access to ample cool air from outside the engine compartment, otherwise the car is undrivable in extreme heat…like summertime in Las Vegas, where he lives. Hence the reason for the massive air intakes behind each rear wheel.
Super Super Car Stats
| Horsepower | 1,300 |
| Torque | 1,300 lb. ft. |
| Length | 194″ |
| Height | 46″ |
| Wheelbase | 140″ |
| Weight | 3,460 lbs. |
| Width at Rear | 87″ |
Drivetrain Difficulties
Routing the 1,300 horsepower from the twin engines to the stock 4-speed transaxle provided another challenge. But it was child’s play for a guy who figured out how to power a motorcycle with a four-pack of engines, including two that run backward. Check out his other builds at his website.
To solve the problem, Tronson designed a custom transfer case inside of which a 14-mm industrial belt, similar to what you see powering a top-fuel dragster blower, transfers the rotation of the crankshafts to the transmission.
And To Top It Off…
To cap his latest creation, Tronson built what’s known as a “buck,” which is essentially a fiberglass and plywood model of the car. The buck is used to make a form that’s used to mold the plastic shell that sits atop the chassis.
The result is a skin that gestures toward the classic Corvette silhouette while embodying a style all its own.
“I think the car looks quite amazing,” said Tronson. “It has those old-school body lines but also has an aggressive, supercar look.”
How Does It Drive?
After the initial wave of intrigue and excitement pass when seeing the car, the next obvious question is, “How does it handle?”
The jury is still out.
“I haven’t driven it very far yet,” said Tronson. “It was barely completed before appearing in the AMSOIL booth at Hot August Nights. Theoretically, it’ll go down the road like any Corvette,” he said.
Tronson turned a few heads when he estimated the car’s speed at more than 200 mph. But, again, that’s just an estimate based on the car’s power-to-weight ratio (which is better than a Bugatti Chiron), gear ratio, tire size and other factors.
We may never know its top speed since Tronson doesn’t plan to drive the car fast enough to find out. “I’m not out there to break the bloody speed record,” he said.
Instead, the “Super Super Car” primarily represents an amazing engineering feat. It’s the confluence of ingenuity, curiosity, art and raw power – a distinctly American creation.
But that doesn’t mean it’ll just be a trailer queen. Tronson wants to augment its show-car status with on-road practicality, too. “Once it’s complete, I’d like to invite Road & Track to do a test drive. I want to get the car to the point that I can give it to someone and say, ‘Here, take it for a ride.'”
We’ll gladly oblige.
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