Who would’ve thunk one might legitimately need a set of wheelie bars on a SmartCar?

This, of course, isn’t exactly your ordinary SmartCar right off the showroom floor, although from external appearance alone, it would seem unmolested. But this very car, which we featured last year after spotting it at the NMCA World Street Finals in Indianapolis, is anything but stock. This fun-sized Smart FourTwo has a 1.5L Toyota Tercel 5EFE engine and transmission setup packed inside, with a Sprintex supercharger pushing 28 lbs. of boost into the little motor through an intercooler and a 500 cfm carburetor.

As the owner, Paul Barnes, told us last year, the combination pumps out a little over 200 horsepower, and with a staggering 30-70 weight balance, traction is anything but an issue. With that fact in mind, it’s keeping the nose on the ground that is the issue, and during a recent outing at the Route 66 Raceway near Chicago, Barnes pointed the 2,215 lb. machine at the sky not once, but twice, and could have easily carried them much further than the christmas tree had he kept his foot in it. 

But perhaps more impressively, the car actually outran a Shelby Mustang for a good 1,000-feet, despite Barnes either lifting early or just running out of gear at the top end, running 13.90 at just 80 MPH, as the Shelby went a quicker 13.67 at a much faster 110 MPH. We do know from our chat with Barnes that this car has run in the 12’s previously, so it’s capable of hurting a lot more feelings.