Tuning

The Red Pig Snorts Again—Now With Four-Digit Horsepower

Some legends never die. They just come back louder, angrier, and with turbochargers.

More than fifty years after Mercedes-Benz and the newly born AMG shocked the racing world with a massive V-8 sedan, the infamous “Rote Sau”—the Red Pig—has been reborn. This time, though, it’s not storming Spa-Francorchamps in factory colors. It’s tearing up California backroads with more than 1,000 horsepower and a carbon-fiber suit.

The original Red Pig was a rolling middle finger to conventional race-car thinking. Based on the stately Mercedes-Benz 300 SEL 6.8, it used a thundering 6.8-liter V-8 to haul a luxury sedan to second overall at the Spa 24 Hours in 1971—an audacious debut that helped put AMG on the global performance map. The real car vanished after the race, sold off to Matra and lost to history, but its legend never faded.

Now it has a modern-day heir.

Instead of resurrecting a fragile museum piece, the builders at S-Klub took a far more radical approach: start with a fourth-generation Mercedes-AMG C63 and wrap it in a hand-built carbon-fiber interpretation of the old 300 SEL. It’s a restomod in the most literal sense—vintage looks, contemporary firepower.

And that firepower is absurd.

The C63’s twin-turbo 4.0-liter V-8 already makes about 510 horsepower in stock S-spec. That wasn’t nearly enough. S-Klub bolted on larger turbochargers, revised the downpipes, and reprogrammed the transmission. The result? A staggering 1,014 horsepower—more than double what the original Red Pig ever dreamed of—while shedding roughly 45 kilograms compared with a factory C63.

In other words, this thing doesn’t just honor history. It tries to rewrite it.

The mechanical madness is matched by the visuals. The wide arches, bright red paint, and cartoonishly aggressive stance mirror the 1971 racer, while details like the blacked-out grille, exposed chassis elements, and LED lighting drag the look firmly into 2025. There’s a full roll cage inside, KW V3 coilovers at the corners, and 18-inch VIP Moduler wheels filling out those bulging fenders. Even the AMG One-inspired steering wheel feels like a wink from the future.

Yet somehow, it all works. This Red Pig doesn’t look like a cosplay car. It looks like what AMG might build if it had no lawyers, no accountants, and absolutely no chill.

S-Klub’s Ed claims it’s the best-driving car they’ve ever built, and that’s saying something for a shop that lives and breathes Stuttgart. With factory brakes, much of the original C63 interior intact, and modern electronics keeping things just barely civilized, this is a race car you can drive to the track, obliterate lap times, and cruise home afterward.

The original Red Pig was outrageous because it wasn’t supposed to work. This one is outrageous because it works too well.

It may not be for sale—but if this is what homage looks like in the age of four-digit horsepower, the legend of the Red Pig has never been more alive.

Source: S-Klub

Tuning

Meet the 1,586-HP Yenko/SC Corvette E-Ray

Once upon a time, the Corvette was America’s attainable supercar. Now? With the arrival of the ZR1X and its twin-turbo V-8 hybrid powertrain, Chevy has kicked the door down on hypercar territory—and then Specialty Vehicle Engineering showed up with a sledgehammer.

Meet the Yenko/SC Corvette E-Ray, a car that takes Chevy’s all-wheel-drive hybrid C8 and turns it into something so violently powerful it makes a Bugatti Chiron look like it’s been hitting the gym only on leg day.

SVE’s starting point is the Corvette E-Ray, already the most usable and underrated C8 variant thanks to its front-mounted electric motor and standard AWD. But SVE wasn’t content with “underrated.” They wanted “obscene.” So they gutted and rebuilt the 6.2-liter LT2 V-8 with forged pistons, a forged crank, beefed-up rods, ARP hardware, a custom camshaft, and a new intake system designed to feed what came next.

That would be a pair of water-cooled, ceramic-bearing turbochargers—because, in the world of modern hypercars, forced induction is no longer optional.

Combined with the E-Ray’s electric motor, the result is a staggering 1,586 horsepower. That’s more than a Bugatti Chiron. That’s more than a ZR1X. That’s more than any Corvette in history by a margin so large it feels disrespectful.

The eight-speed dual-clutch transmission has been fortified to survive this madness, and SVE adds a boost-by-gear system so the tires don’t immediately dissolve into smoke. With all-wheel drive helping claw the car forward, this Yenko could very well become the quickest street-legal Corvette ever built. No official numbers have been released, but SVE hints at quarter-mile times in the low-eight-second range, which is drag-strip-terrorist territory.

Visually, the Yenko/SC E-Ray will stand apart thanks to custom forged wheels—20 inches up front, 21 inches out back—plus unique graphics and badging. There’s a bespoke exhaust, color-matched brake calipers, and light interior tweaks, including new floor mats and skid plates. It’s more hot-rod than haute couture, and that’s exactly the point.

And here’s the truly wild part: SVE backs the twin-turbo engine with a three-year, 60,000-kilometer warranty. That’s a bold move when you’re asking a GM-designed small-block to output more than one and a half megawatts of power. After that coverage runs out, though, you’d better keep your savings account well fed—because the LT2 was never supposed to live this kind of life.

In an era when hypercars cost seven figures and arrive with velvet ropes and long waiting lists, the Yenko/SC E-Ray offers a very American alternative: buy a Corvette, give it to a tuner with no fear, and embarrass everything short of a rocket ship. For an automotive journalist with a weakness for outrageous machines, that’s about as good as it gets.

Source: Specialty Vehicle Engineering

News

Why China Is About to Force EVs Back to Normal Steering Wheels

For a hot minute, the yoke steering wheel was the ultimate EV flex. It looked like something lifted from a Le Mans prototype, promised better gauge visibility, and told the world you’d finally escaped the tyranny of the circle. But in China—the world’s biggest car market—that experiment is about to end.

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has published a draft of a new national safety standard, GB 11557-202X, that quietly but effectively bans steering wheels with a “cut-off” top. When it takes effect on January 1, 2027, every newly approved vehicle will need to comply. And that’s bad news for yokes.

Why China Is Cracking Down

On paper, the regulation is about crash safety, not design. The existing rulebook, written back in 2011, simply isn’t up to the job anymore. EVs are heavier, faster, and packed with new structures and airbag systems that didn’t exist a decade ago. So MIIT decided to rewrite the playbook—and it took inspiration from global standards like UN Regulation R12, which governs how steering systems behave in a crash.

The new Chinese rules tighten several key limits. The maximum horizontal force measured during dummy testing is reduced to 11,110 newtons, and the allowed rearward and upward movement of the steering column in a crash is more strictly capped. Even more important: every car, no matter what clever design it uses, must now pass full human-impact testing. No more exemptions.

And that’s where the yoke runs head-first into a wall.

A Shape That Can’t Be Tested

Under the new standard, regulators must hit the steering wheel rim in ten different locations during crash tests. Among them are two killers for yoke designs: “the middle of the weakest part” and “the middle of the shortest unsupported part.” A steering wheel that doesn’t have a top section physically doesn’t have those areas. Which means it cannot, by definition, satisfy the test procedure.

That’s not bureaucratic nit-picking—it’s about how a human body interacts with the wheel in a crash. According to Autohome, nearly half of all driver injuries in China—46 percent—are related to parts of the steering system. A traditional circular wheel spreads impact loads more evenly as the driver moves forward. A yoke, by contrast, creates a ledge that the body can slide over and then strike again, raising the risk of injury during secondary impacts.

Airbags Make It Even Worse

Modern steering wheels are also airbag delivery devices, and the new Chinese rules get very specific about what’s allowed around a deploying airbag. Hard or sharp elements that could be driven toward the driver are now banned.

With a conventional wheel, that’s relatively easy to validate. With a yoke—often made from complex molded plastic and metal reinforcement—things get unpredictable. When the airbag explodes out of the hub, pieces can fracture in strange ways. Regulators don’t like “strange ways.” They like repeatable, testable outcomes.

A round wheel gives them that. A yoke does not.

Real-World Driving Still Matters

Even if you don’t care about crash labs and dummy metrics, drivers have their own beef with yokes. Production cars, unlike race cars, need big steering angles for U-turns, parking, and tight city maneuvers. With no top rim to grab, one-handed steering becomes awkward, and drivers report accidentally brushing touchscreen controls while scrambling for leverage.

The yoke may look futuristic, but daily driving is stubbornly analog.

What Happens Next

Once the new GB 11557-202X standard takes effect in 2027, any newly homologated vehicle in China will need a compliant steering system. Cars already on sale will likely get about a 13-month grace period before they, too, must be updated.

For automakers, especially those chasing the EV trend with sci-fi interiors, the message is clear: the circle is back.

And honestly? Good. The steering wheel has survived more than a century not because it looks cool, but because it works—ergonomically, mechanically, and now, it turns out, legally.

Source: Autohome

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