200 Miles Per Hour In A Neon Is The Sketchiest Thing You'll See Today

Image: The Texas Mile

What’s the standard hot rod recipe? Put a ton of power in a small car and go fast! Over the weekend someone went 200.9 miles per hour in a first-generation Dodge Neon in the standing mile at the wild Texas Mile top speed event. That’s truly impressive, considering the standard Neon coupe has a largely unimpressive coefficient of drag of just 0.33. It took a lot of power to get to that number, and this one has a turbocharger the size of my head.

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The first-generation Dodge Neon is best known for being a bare bones economy car that sold on the cheap in the 1990s. They could be had in R/T and ACR variants with a 150 horsepower twin-cam 2-liter, and while they had some success in SCCA Showroom Stock racing, they weren’t exactly screaming fast. Both variants were speed limited to 130 miles per hour in stock form, and as an owner of a 1G Neon ACR, I can tell you it’s pretty sketchy at that speed. I can’t imagine another 70 miles per hour!

Mr. Malcolm T. Ward got his Neon to run over 200 miles per hour from a standstill in just one mile. Ward has been running Neons with some light aero modifications and a turbocharged engine swap from a wrecked Neon SRT-4 since 2012, when he went 169 with the turbo 2.4 still largely stock.

The SRT-4 made a modest-by-today’s-standards 215 horsepower in stock form. Since 2012 Ward has been working on making a lot more power to press his Neon to the 200 mph mark. With a highly modified block, a giant turbo, and VP Racing C85 fuel, this Neon now puts down over 700 horsepower to the wheels. Yeah, that’s enough.

Texas Mile Neon We did it!!!

The onboard of this car is so sketchy. The car is spinning the wheels through fourth gear, and it doesn’t look like he can even put his foot all the way down until he’s over 100 miles per hour! This Neon hit its stock top speed in the quarter mile, hitting 128.8. By the half mile, it had only gained 30 miles per hour, laying down a 159.7 run. Forty one more miles per hour were gained in the latter half of the run, giving the car a full 200.9. That’s faster than most of the other cars in the video, including a modified McLaren. When you can outrun McLarens in your 1998 Neon, you know you’ve built a monster.

Considering most Neon coupes have issues with wind noise between the non-framed window glass and the a-pillar, I’m surprised 200 miles per hour didn’t suck the windows right out of the car.