Engine builder Gale Banks goes diesel for guilt-free performance

Gale Banks has been building outrageously powerful engines for almost half a century now and in the past two decades he has turned most of his efforts toward diesels. Back in the late eighties, Banks Engineering actually built and supplied the turbo-diesel system that General Motors offered as a factory option on their full-size pickup trucks.

Banks is one of the people working to change the image of oil burners away from noisy smoky tractor trailers toward efficient yet high performance machines. The Sidewinder Dodge Dakota diesel he built set a world record speed for a production based pickup truck of over 222 mph at Bonneville in 2002 and averaged 23.6 mpg while pulling the support trailer back and forth from Banks southern California Shop to the salt flats. Let's see a Veyron or Enzo do that. Banks is now offering a variety of high-performance conversions for all kinds of diesel vehicles.

[Source: Detroit News]