There are few engines in the history of American racing that have the legendary status, the incredible aura, and the overall lack of race wins to back it all up than the famed Novi Indy car engine. Essentially a pair of Offenhauser four bangers hooked together, the beastly thing made more than 450hp in its original form in 1935. By the time it was last seen at Indy in the middle 1960s, It was making more than 850hp with 60-70 psi of boost heading through it. This thing is still a top 10 most powerful engine Indy racing history and it has not powered a car there in more than 50 years.
Like many things that are immensely powerful, reliability was a major issue for the engine. Multiple drivers qualified the engine very well over the years grabbing top ten spots and coming into race day with high hopes for success but it was never to be. Yes, there were some top five finishes but there was never a race win for the incredibly powerful mill. It was rightfully feared in the pits but at the end of the day it may may been too radical for its own good. Hell, even Juan Miguel Fangio tested a car at the Brickyard with this engine and raved about it.
The last thing that people still talk about regarding the engine was the noise. It was one of the loudest and angriest mills to ever traverse the famous race track. Why? The multiple stage centrifugal blower was like a giant amplifier and with big valves and four cams there was plenty of space and flow for all that noise to escape. Too cool, right?
Take all that stuff we just told you and shrink it. What we have below is a tiny version of the Novi V8 running in a miniature race car and it is amazing. Hand made from scratch, this one happens to be naturally aspirated and that’s fine with us. You will hear it fire and run and you will see the builder doing some tuning on it it as well to get it running perfectly.
Enjoy this small look at one of the coolest racing engines of all time….miniaturized!
