The GMC Cyclone, a car for working people that was turned into a factory hot rod, is a great underdog story. With an all-wheel-drive system and a turbocharged 4.3-liter V6 engine, it beat fancy cars in the quarter-mile and from 0 to 60 mph. In the 1990s, the Cyclone was a cheaper supercar killer, but now you can buy a clean one for the same price as a new Corvette. Like Tony Angelo from the Stay Tuned YouTube channel, you could make your own for less than $6,000. He spent $2,000 on a “rust-free-dish” Chevy S10 and an AWD Astro van engine to give it the same V6 as a Cyclone without the turbo. The “Sike Clone” is ready. A $675 Chinese turbo kit replaced the forced induction part. In July, while the first part of the building was still being done, we wrote a story about it. Angelo has made other changes, like putting a Corvette gearbox servo and a side-exit exhaust on the car. The DIY build has been tried on a dyno, and the goal has always been to get the same 280 horsepower and 350 pound-feet of torque at the crank as the factory Cyclone. In his most recent video, Angelo was pleased to say that the Sike Clone is now more potent than the original. By playing with the air-fuel ratio, the best run was 265 horsepower and 370 pound-feet of torque at the wheels. This is much more power than the average street truck in the 1990s could make. It can do this job even though it only has an engine and a slight boost. The first Cyclone could go from 0 to 60 mph in 4.3 seconds, which is also a big deal. In their instrumented tests, only the Car and Driver could do it quickly. Angelo says that owners of Cyclone vehicles have told him that their best times are 4.9 seconds, which is still pretty fast. It took 4.58 seconds to make the Sike Clone. So, this creaky old truck can get to highway speeds faster than a brand-new Ford Super Duty with a high-output 6.7-liter Power Stroke engine. Even though the car has 500 horsepower and 1,200 pound-feet of torque, it’s clear that it needs to move a lot more weight. The HO engine is an extra that costs $12,495, making the whole Sike Clone cheaper than the Super Duty’s most potent engine by itself. Things became better after that. As you can see, this building gives you a lot of fun for your money. Even though it looks and sounds terrible, that makes it even worse. If speed were my only concern, I’d choose this road immediately, which costs the same as a ninth-generation Civic with 200,000 kilometers.
