Double Trouble: A Twin Engine VW That Rips Off 9-Second Passes

Letting the other guy win while you do your testing work.
Look at the speeds board, etc.......


By Brian Wagner September 03, 2019


As much as racers hate to admit it, there is a horsepower ceiling that an engine can produce before parts begin to fail in spectacular fashion. Volkswagen builder Silviu Ghita found a workaround for the amount of power that his Volkswagen Lupo could put down by adding a second engine. His dual-engine creation makes over 1,800 horsepower and cranks off some wild 9-second passes.

Ghita hails from Romania, where he runs DOP Motorsports, a company that specializes in VW horsepower. His Lupo uses a pair of 2-liter engines from a VW Golf R, along with two DSG DQ250 transmissions to put the power down. These engines and transmissions work independently of each other and both make over 900 horsepower, giving Ghita’s VW about 1,800 horsepower to utilize. Having two engines and two transmissions to tune makes for an interesting set of challenges that Ghita has learned to overcome.



To show off his twin-engine Lupo, Ghita made the 1,500-mile trip to Santa Pod Raceway so he could participate in the VW Action event. In his home country of Romania, Ghita turned the engines up all the way so they each produced 1,200 horsepower and that rocketed his Lupo to a best of 8.78 at over 170 mph. During the VW action event, Ghita made a best pass of 9.22 at 161 mph with the engines turned down to just 900 horsepower each.

In the videos from VeeDubRacing and Mk1Kieran, you can see just how insane Ghita’s Lupo really is. With a pair of engines each trying to do their own thing, the car wants to dart all over the track. When the car decided it wanted to start making lane changes at the top end, Ghita spots the racer in the other lane a whole track length before he drops the hammer and goes for a wild ride.