Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor Fires Up 27-Liter V12 Engine

Here's what happens when you shove a 27-liter V12 tank engine into a Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor. This is the first test start in the car, but later, the build would have a twin-turbo system for a serious power upgrade.

The Rolls-Royce Meteor was a development from the famous and was specifically for tank or other motorized artillery applications. The Meteor wasn't supercharged and had to run on lower octane gasoline rather than the high-octane avgas for the Merlin. This was enough to make around 600 horsepower (447 kilowatts) in early applications in the 1940s and 810 hp (604 kW) in later versions.

This Meteor has been heavily modified, including the installation of the twin-turbo setup. The team's goal is to make 2,500 hp (1,864 kW) and 3,806 pound-feet (5,160 Newton-meters) of torque.

The engine doesn't have that massive power figure yet because the turbos are not sending boost to the powerplant. Getting the thing going isn't so easy. The mill starts briefly then immediately stalls. This happens a few times while the guy behind the laptop makes tweaks before things finally come to life. The engine settles into an idle, and a thermal camera shows all of the cylinders operating.

Tank Engines For All:

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The next test gets the engine running and then feeding it some revs. There are no problems this time.

This project still has a long way to go. A later part of the video shows that there is a gearbox, but it isn't hooked up yet. Also, there are going to need to be major modifications to the body. A firewall is going to occupy a spot making the front doors nearly useless. The team needs to create a whole new cockpit just to make this thing realistically drivable.

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