Ford's body-on-frame Crown Victoria was gifted with an engine bay big enough to receive a diverse selection of engines from aftermarket builders, but a Swedish enthusiast is pushing the limits of its versatility by shoehorning a 27-liter V12 into a former cop car. He's hoping to achieve a power level that eclipses the Bugatti Chiron's.
Daniel Werner told Road & Track he found the engine before sourcing the car. He looked at plane engines, including the 37-liter Rolls-Royce Griffon originally fitted to Spitfire planes, but major packaging constraints led him to the Meteor V12 built by the same company. It has 27 liters of displacement, and it was developed to power tanks during the Second World War. It notably made 600 horsepower in the Cromwell tank used by British forces. He then bought a 2006 Crown Victoria that once served as a police interceptor in Stockton, California. It was already in Sweden, it had a blown engine, and it needed a new home. He named the car the Meteor Interceptor.
600 horses in a Crown Vic sounds like plenty, Ford shipped the final examples with 224 horsepower, but it's not much when the cavalry comes from a boat anchor-like lump that weighs more than a Volkswagen Karmann-Ghia. Basic physics convinced Werner to aim for 2,500 horsepower by twin-turbocharging the Meteor and installing a custom ECU. It will spin the rear wheels via a TH400 transmission reinforced to handle the 12's monumental output.
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Looking at his Instagram account confirms the swap is, predictably, not very straightforward. Installing it required cutting out most of the sheet metal in the engine bay and removing a big chunk of the firewall. Many parts are custom-made, including the ECU's trigger wheel, and Werner is adapting front-end components from a Chevrolet C10 pickup to cope with the weight. He's also hoping to raise the engine's redline from 3,000 to 4,000 rpm.
"It's not an intelligence choice of engine if you want to have 2,500 horsepower and race," Werner told Road & Track. "I wanted to do this out of passion," he added candidly. Although the Meteor Interceptor won't live its life a quarter-mile at a time, it's not destined to become a trailer queen, either. Werner explained he will ultimately try to cross the 200-mph barrier in it, and he's confident he'll pull it off. We'll be keeping a close eye on this project.
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