2010 Chevy Camaro With Boosted Vortec I6 Swap Cracks 1,000 HP to the Tire

A lot of people forget or straight up never knew that General Motors built a dual overhead cam inline-six in the 2000s. It’s known by several names: The LL8, Vortec 4200, or more colloquially, the Ameri-Barra. The latter draws on a comparison to the mighty Barra I6 that Ford sold for years in Australia. Tuners love that thing, and given the GM engine’s similarity, American performance nuts like Calvin Nelson are using it for some crazy-high-power builds. Take his 2010 Chevy Camaro SS for example—it just cracked 1,000 horsepower at the tire.

Nelson goes by Nivlac57 on YouTube where he documents the progress of all his builds. Just so you know, he also has a Vortec 4200-powered Ford Fairmont wagon that’ll run 8s in the quarter-mile. He’s plenty familiar with these inline-sixes as he’s put them in several other cars before. The Camaro we’re talking about here might be my favorite because instead of swapping an LS into it, he swapped an LS3 out of it.

The American Supra-type project is obviously tuned up to make that much power. Nelson mentions in the video that it’s running Molnar connecting rods and Diamond pistons in addition to a head ported by Snyder Performance, Schneider Racing 66RH camshafts, Crower valve springs, and ARP head studs as well as main studs. The head gasket, crankshaft, and main caps are stock, impressively.

As for the turbo, it’s a VS Racing 8082 unit that’s plumbed up with modified LS headers. Nelson has used this blower throughout the build’s evolution, running it first at 9 psi and making right around 398 hp at the wheels—not too shabby for a starting point. Bumping boost up to 13 psi yielded a 47-hp improvement to 445 whp, and now, he believes it’s the limiting factor in making more power. More on that in a second.

Nelson reckoned they’d need to crank the boost up to 38 pounds to break the 1,000-hp mark. He was pretty close, as it turns out a 4.2-liter Chevy Trailblazer engine with these mods needs 39 psi and some additional ignition timing to do it. That’s just plain crazy, especially when you remember these aren’t crank hp figures—they’re measured at the wheel.

Just listen to it spool at 7,400 rpm:

It took a few tries to hit the mark, and as Nelson explains, they’re fighting some serious backpressure. But seeing how well this package performed—even the intercooler that’s only rated for 800 hp—is super encouraging. There’s no telling how much further it can go, but I’ll tell you this: I’m excited to learn.

Maybe I ought to start shopping around…

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