Using a heavily modified SRT-4 drivetrain and C85, this stock-looking Neon is one of the fastest on Earth.
The desire to take the slowest car possible and make it fast as hell is something every car enthusiast has felt. It usually starts with a “wouldn’t it be funny” and evolves into a 1,000 horsepower minivan, but for Malcolm T. Ward it was an otherwise ordinary 1998 Dodge Neon that he modified into a 200 mph Texas Mile-smashing machine.
Ward started with a different Neon in 2012: a white Neon coupe that had the 2.4-liter turbo engine from a Neon SRT-4. According to The Texas Mile Facebook page, Ward went 169 mph with just a few bolt-ons on the stock engine. That’s when the bug bit him, and he started developing the Neon to go as fast as possible.
With better aerodynamics and a built engine, Ward pushed his white Neon to the low 190 mph range until it blew its head gasket in October 2020. He then purchased the blue Neon from his stepson, who needed to sell it because of divorce proceedings, and swapped everything from his white Neon, plus an even stronger engine, into the blue car. With technical support from High PSI Performance of Texas, Ward filled the Neon with C85 race fuel and boosted it to 700 hp for the most recent Texas Mile event.
While Ward doesn’t disclose many specifics about the build of the Neon, like turbo size, camshafts, or engine internals, the results speak for themselves. Based on the onboard video, the Neon clearly has a colossal turbocharger that doesn’t hit boost until very late in the rev range and lost all of its boost pressure with every shift. But once the turbo comes to life, it freaking freight trains to 200.9 mph in a standing mile. That is seriously fast.
Texans, beware of nondescript blue Neon coupes. The next one you try to overtake might be this one.
