TDC's Scott Sussman Is Back To Prove A Point And Feed A Market With His Single-Turbo 4.6
It seems every time we see Turbo Driven Concepts' Scott Sussman at a Ford event, he has something new for our cameras to drool over. We first met Scott at Moroso Motorsports Park's Ford Power Festival in October 1999. He brought with him a wicked '97 Saleen S281 Speedster packing a twin-turbo'd 351 Windsor capable of belting out more than 1,000 hp to the rear wheels ("The Answer," Apr. 2000, p. 20). Exactly a year later at the same event, Scott rolled out a nondescript little '93 coupe-again packin' twin turbos, but this time a junkyard 302 with old-school J302 heads and a GT-40 intake was residing under the hood. That car made the April '01 cover and was featured on page 60 ("Surprise Attack") in the same issue. The cars were polar opposites on the outside, but both packed enough power to pull Florida off the map-not to mention the ability to humble even the most exotic of road-going machinery.
At last year's Fun Ford Bradenton opener, Scott once again caught our attention with this '01 GT. Not a sleeper compared to the '93 coupe, but there is little exterior indication of what is lurking under the hood. As a matter of fact, the only giveaways of the power within are a Kaennan hood and a set of Bogarts wrapped in Mickey Thompsons-that's it.
There are several reasons for the birth of TDC's latest experiment in turbo-charging. First, popular demand was huge for someone to build a turbo kit for the modular market. Scott says in the last five years he's had more than a thousand phone calls asking for a modular Mustang kit. Once the 5.0 kits were done and established, the project was put into high gear, and the car you see here was purchased. "I needed a new car anyway," Scott says.
Of course, another reason behind the project is that everyone said it couldn't be done. As most of you know, when you tell someone-especially a manufacturer-that something can't be done, it'll be available before you know it. Development time for the complete kits took just six months.
The car's development can also be attributed to Scott's desire to be the first person having a 1,000hp Two-Valve modular, a number he thinks is possible with the Stage 3 kit (see Number Crunching sidebar). Obviously he hasn't built this car to those specs yet, but he says those numbers are well within the realm of possibility. In order to make that kind of a number, the modular is going to need a big turbo. "The modular needs a big turbo anyway," Scott says. "Modulars need a lot of air to make big power."
But why an automatic? Scott says the car was destined for a transbrake. He heard good things about the new 4R70W automatic overdrive, and with the Autologic software "You can control a lot of functions within the tranny," he says. "The combo of a transbrake and a turbo is hard to beat. It's easier to build boost under a load as opposed to a stick with the engine just freewheeling."
Though naysayers abound, Scott maintains the numbers the car has been able to throw down. If you were paying attention to our Nov. '01 issue ("Combo Deal," p. 49), you know the car reportedly made 444 hp and 509 lb-ft of torque on TDC's own Dynojet, numbers that were courtesy of just 5.5 pounds of boost. Realistically, on a load-bearing dyno-such as a Mustang Dynamometer-Scott says the car should still make 400 hp and 500 lb-ft of torque. Further proof is the timeslip that he holds from the Gainesville Fun Ford Weekend race, where the car ran a 12.04 at 117 mph on Mickey Thompson Sportsmans at 5.5 pounds of boost. With slicks, he says the car should easily run in the 11s. Remember, this is a full-weight GT with an automatic, so there's a lot of weight holding the times back.
For 2002, Scott says the car will be put on a diet, but a built engine is also in the GT's crystal ball. "In less than a year's time, the car will be in the low 10s and still be a daily driver," he says.