Cuda340

According to allpar, the reason the 392's horsepower did not exceed 500 hp was the failure of the engine to pass the 200,00 mile durability test. However, the March/April 2011 issue of MOPAR tells a different story.

According to Kraig Courtney, SRT engine design supervisor, the issue was not durability, but torque. Here is his direct quote:

"We were pretty confident that we could get 500 hp, but the engine didn't feel all that better than the 6.1 in the car. The prototype 392 was strong up high, but as you accelerated, it didn't give you that kick in the butt we expected- a kick in the butt approaching that of the muscle cars of old. It didn't come on until the rpms came up and then the power was there. The first 6.4 just wasn't as strong feeling as the numbers said it should be.

So we took a look at the intake that's being used in our trucks right now, it's an SRV dual-runner intake that we can run short runner or long runner. Obviously, you run short runner for power and long runner for torque. So we made up some manifolds and ran them in a car and it felt a LOT better. Not as much horsepower, but the area under the torque curve was far bigger. So this car comes out of the hole really strong. Its launch is impressive. Its got power on tap all the way up through the full range.

It does 0-60 times with authority. We can go out and, quite honestly, take on some of the competition's cars that are more powerful according to their numbers. We had a 6.1 that was modified by an aftermarket tuner and we were running it off against the 392 and there was no real difference- we were staying right with them with our naturally aspirated 6.4 car."

This all makes sense, because I was wondering how they were going to pull of a supercharged version, in the future, if there were engine durability issues.