Making a Prius Fast?

[morpheusx]

In terms of ease and cost there really is no better car to get for heavy modifications then a Civic especially if you like to do it just because you like tinkering.

I have also found that there are lots of great mods that you can do on any VW platform. A few nice mods to their 1.8T engine (Golf, Rabbit, Jetta, New Beetle, Passat) combined with the larger wheels and stiffer suspension that they already use on the Turbo models and they can become quite a fast little race car. There are guys that have swapped out the turbo's and chipped them and have well over 250HP. The wife has a 2001 New Beetle and based on my readings by connecting it to my laptop, by just changing to copper plugs (they disipate heat faster), changing air boxes, plus keeping the inside of the intake manifold and throttle body clean I have increased it from 150HP to just over 180HP.

As far as the Prius goes I can't imagine any one modification that you could do other then stiffening the suspension and or bigger rims and wider tires to improve the sports driving performance. Making it faster probably not. Like one of the previous posters already said if you reduced some of the weight maybe a little. I bet you could remove about 300 pounds by removing the front passenger seat, carpets, rear seat, spare tire and jack, trunk cargo shelf, glove boxes, door paneling, and only driving with 1/4 tank of gas.

[JimboPalmer]

For those with the technical skill, and no common sense, some guy has both supercharged and turbo charged his Gen I Prius.
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It is worth noting that he did not feel he had more power, he felt he had full power longer.

[PriusLewis]

Originally Posted by Rokeby

M10,

Here is a place to start reading on perhaps the fastest Prius known:

Landspeed Prius Races Across Bonneville Salt Flats

IIRC, the car has a one-of-a-kind chip -- from TRD? -- for ICE control.
I suspect that it maxes out the top end as opposed to low/mid range.

It also has the non-Atkinson Cycle engine (I believe from the Echo, same engine as the Prius but with conventional compression and valve timing). That swap alone is probably worth quite a few HP (at the expense of torque).

[SlowTurd]

buy a subaru wrx

[M10]

thanks for the responses, alot of stuff to think about...hmmm.....

[a64pilot]

While I think it wouldn't be terribly hard to significantly increase power output as long as emissions and fuel consumption were ignored, my gut feeling is that the PSD wouldn't handle much increased power and stronger parts for it probably don't exist.
Pretty sure that if the PSD were capable of handling say 300 HP, there would be an efficiency loss that would result in lower FE, so I believe Toyota worked pretty hard to "match" the size and strength of the PSD to the stock power output.
Yes, I can see how a Prius "sleeper" could be fun, but I think you would be better of buying an old one and completely gutting it of all mechanicals and replacing them with some proven engine/powertrain combination. Of course then it's not a Prius, but it would look like one.

[SlowTurd]

i would tend to think the cvt would blow apart

[JimboPalmer]

Got Hybrid? - Sport - Auto Reviews - Car and Driver
Actually the land speed record article shows how to make any Prius fast, push it with a Toyota Tundra.

[PriusLewis]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

While I think it wouldn't be terribly hard to significantly increase power output as long as emissions and fuel consumption were ignored, my gut feeling is that the PSD wouldn't handle much increased power and stronger parts for it probably don't exist.

I wonder if it's different from the one in the bigger Toyota hybrids? If it's the same it would handle more torque.

Originally Posted by JimboPalmer

Got Hybrid? - Sport - Auto Reviews - Car and Driver
Actually the land speed record article shows how to make any Prius fast, push it with a Toyota Tundra.

To be fair, they only pushed it up to speed to conserve battery power.

[hampdenwireless]

If I was forced to make the Prius faster and was given a several thousands of dollars I would swap the engine for the same Toyota engine in non Atkinson and add a turbo. Those changes might confuse the computer but the sensors could be fooled to make it work. This would be easier on the 2'nd gen vs the 3'rd due to the preheater that works on the exhaust on the 3'rd.