One of the main performance bottlenecks identified early on in the history of the internal-combustion engine was the inability to deliver an engine’s basic operating requirements in correct proportions. Spark is no problem, and fuel can easily flood an engine with a relatively small carburetor. The problem was air. A perfect mixture of 14.7 parts air to one part fuel is very difficult to pack into the cylinders without the help of compression-assisted induction.

Enter the turbocharger. Patented by a fellow named Alfred Büchi in 1905 to assist diesel induction, the turbocharger highlighted the value of compressing air by the employment of flowing exhaust gases. It would be a long journey before turbos made regular appearances in production cars straight off the assembly line, but it was only to be a matter of time. Whether we wanted to build smaller, more efficient engines with power on demand or we wanted insane amounts of power from our big motors, the turbo was here to stay.

But that didn't mean it wouldn't improve along the way. One improvement was the implementation of more than one turbo because, if one turbo is better than no turbos, two turbos must be better than one turbo. Right? It’s this type of dangerous thinking that keeps us on our toes as we watch a never-ending quest to extract the maximum possible power from the minimum cubic inches. At a certain point however, one has to ask the question: “Is all this really necessary?” The rational answer is almost always a big "No" but we’re car guys, so we relish in excessive and unnecessary power stats.

20 Mitsubishi 3000GT VR-4

autocart.biz

Known technically as the Mistubishi GTO in its local Japanese markets, most people knew the model as the Stealth when it was sold as a captive import (an import sold under the brand of a domestic manufacturer in their native distribution network). In Japan, you’d get dinged with increased fixed costs like registration penalties from the government, who felt that the 3000GT's exterior dimensions exceeded what the Japanese citizen needed. (That’s why Japan has little three-wheeled trucks with no doors and we have six-door, 6X6 diesels with over 700hp.) In stateside trim, the Stealth’s optional DOHC, 24-valve, twin-turbocharged V6 made 324 horsepower at 6,000 RPM and 315 ft-lbs of torque, which let it do quarter miles in 13 seconds at over 100mph from the factory. Not bad, 1990s.

19 Audi RS6

Auditography

Audi has always tried to be a heavy hitter in the sports sedan arena, and they’ve managed to compile quite a repertoire for themselves over the years. They do love their turbos, and they also like their horsepower, and over the years the RS6 has had plenty of both.

This version is just a few horses shy of 600.

That’s arguably more powerful than any sedan ever needs to be, but seeing as that’s how we like our cars in the first place, you’re hearing no complaints from HotCars about packing horsepower in places where it doesn’t belong. General rule of thumb of horsepower: enough is never enough, even when it seems like enough.

18 Ford GT

media.ford.com

This legend is reborn and repackaged into a modern outfit that’s worthy of sharing the roads with the absolute best that Europe or Japan can dish out in the supercar area. Technically, I guess you’d call it a hypercar, but anything above a certain threshold just starts to get wild no matter what you call it. With 647 horsepower and 550 ft-lbs of torque pulsing from the 3.5-liter, twin-turbo V-6, the GT is well into the wild category based on engine performance alone. It’s a road-legal hypercar that’s slick enough to land you a trophy wife by just standing next to it, and you don’t even have to have it running. (Just imagine what it’d do for you when you start showing off its three-second 0-60 time.)

17 Vengeance Viper

dragtimes.com

The Vengeance Viper is hailed as the world’s fastest Gen 5 Viper with a manual transmission. The record-breaking action took place at a South Carolina drag strip in Aiken and focused around Ned Dunphy’s 2014 Viper that’s been doctored heavily by Vengeance Racing.

And this is one business that actually delivers on the monumental expectations set forth by its name.

An LME, 513cid race motor is outfitted with a pair of 76mm Precision turbos, and with 28 psi in the manifold, the estimated power output is in the 1,511 horsepower neighborhood. Quarter-miles pass by in the low-nines (9.283 seconds) at 124mph with a power band that seems to have no end. Five angry gear shifts are all you need to settle just about anything.

16 Zenvo ST1

motortrendondemand.com

The transition from sports car to super car (or whatever you’d classify the Viper as) is pretty clear. Nobody in a 1990 Dodge Stealth is going to see something like the Vengeance Viper and start to get brave at a red light. However, you may be almost tempted to make a run at it in your Zenvo. The slight horsepower difference doesn’t worry you because you’re still up in the quadruple digits and you’re packing a 0-60mph time of three seconds flat. There’s not much to be worried about when you’re that fast, except maybe a Bugatti. The ST1 is completely hand-built aside from the five-axis machine work. The car had a rough patch on an Episode of Top Gear, but what water under any bridge doesn’t see some tears every now and then?

15 Bugatti Chiron

topspeed.com

Forget quarter-mile times, you can measure the Chiron a little differently for a better performance perspective. With its astronomical price tags, Bugatti knows it had better deliver some goods. In the case of the Chiron, those goods are packaged in the form of a quad-turbo (yes, that's two twin-turbos), 8.0-liter W16 powerplant pumping 1,500 horsepower to all four wheels. To illustrate the car’s stellar performance in a full-circle demonstration, Bugatti contracted the professional driving services of Formula 1 driver Juan Pablo Montoya to run a 0-248-0 blitz. That's 248 miles per hour, not kilometers, by the way. The Chiron flew through this test over a distance of 1.62 miles, completing the feat in just 41.96 seconds.

14 BMW M550i

stltoday.com

They’re already calling it the quickest 5-Series sedan of all time, which is a pretty presumptuous statement even for BMW. Proprietary “Sport” mode tightens the suspension and automatically weights the steering, while nicely timed pedal drops to the carpet will initiate a crisp downshift to get the 4.4-liter V-8 some proper footing.

And when the new 5-Series opens up, scenery blurs instantaneously.

Generally speaking, at wide-open throttle, you’re grabbing 6th gear at around 140mph with a whole new gear to burn up on the way to a 7,000rpm redline. The all-wheel xDrive system is rear-wheel biased, although you can’t run it in rear-only mode like the torque vectoring system found in the M5. Still, a 456-horsepower, twin-turbo isn’t something to look down your nose at (unless you’re doing it from an M, that is).

13 BMW M550D

motor1.com

Under the age-old adage “you can never have too much,” the assumption that two turbos are better than one turbo would also have to also assume four turbos to be better than two. That’s what the M550d designers assumed, and I think they were right. Even as Europeans are slowly easing away from their beloved compression-ignition power, the 394-horsepower, quad-turbo, 3.0-liter inline-six stands strong on the map as a pinnacle of light-diesel luxury to date. However, it’s still hard to imagine the implicit need for four turbos on a three-liter for any other reason than showmanship. Audi’s triple-turbo SQ7 and the tri-spooling Bentley Bentayga seem to be a direct target of BMW’s engineering measuring stick.

12 BMW M6 Coupe

bmwblog.com

BMW will give you two words when asked what they designed the M6 for: serious horsepower. Their Launch Control system allows the 4.4-liter, twin-turbo V-8 under the hood of the m6 to lay out all 560 horsepower out as soon as the brake pedal is released.

And if you care to make a statement, you can make it all the way up to 60 miles per hour in 4.1 seconds.

The seven-speed automatic takes care of all the tricky shifting business, all you have to worry about is looking cool because this car attracts a lot of attention—whether it’s wanted or not. Everybody seems to want to know how the M6 sounds when it revs up (everybody who knows what’s under the hood, anyway).

11  Toyota Supra

engineswapdepot.com

This is not just any Toyota Supra, but we'll save the Fast and the Furious references for later. This is hot rodding. The twin-turbo 5.0L is not native to this Supra, rather it's something a little more wild. Although it's nonetheless fitting to install a 48-valve DOHC engine into one of the most classic twin-turbocharged cars ever made. With a factory power output of around 300 horsepower, this Supra needed some modifications because you can make 300 horses with a lawnmower these days. The Japanese motor was installed by Tek One Autoworks in Riverside, California and when the whole project is done more than 800 horsepower is anticipated from pump gas while race fuel is expected to bump this number closer to 2,000.

10 Volkswagen Transporter 2.0L

motors.co.uk

Someone took the Transporter away from us long ago, but it seems they kept it for themselves, and they can have it. Maybe it's stylish as far as minivans go but it’s a minivan nonetheless, no matter what our European friends may call it.

It comes in typical small-displacement form, and the whole package really doesn’t look that bad.

But you run into a snag when the power ratings are revealed and you find out that your bi-turbo 2.0L can barely pump out north of 200horsepower without a struggle. I’m pretty sure we’ve seen plenty of single-turbo setups do well above this number not even trying; aside from bragging rights there’s not much special about this thing (unless you like shiny rims and limo tint on minivans).

9 2008 Range Rover Sport

berkshiresportsandprestige.co.uk

Land Rover has been known to drop a few superchargers into their vehicles here and there, but no turbos—especially not two turbos. When one guy bit the bad end of a sour grape and ended up with a luxury SUV struggling with a bad set of head gaskets, he decided to take a slightly different approach to resolve it. There’s more than one way to skin a cat, and if a replacement drivetrain for a premium luxury vehicle doesn’t suit your fancy, go with Detroit power. A 5.3-liter iron block and a twin turbo are both working wonders for this guy. So well, in fact, he opts to run drag radials on it.

8 Silver Bullet

bataklagu.com

Frank Pompilio is a nice enough guy. He probably has a regular job, a regular life, and regular family. You’d never look twice at him on the streets. What you wouldn’t be able to take your eyes off, however, is his monster Mustang that’s bad enough to take home PDRA gold at the US 131 Motorsports Park in Martin, Michigan. The Gypsum Drywall Mustang is powered by a ProLine Racing powerplant that can suck up several cubic feet of atmosphere in the time it takes you to sneeze. None other than a 526cid big block can thanked for that bit of madness, and since the 67’s transition to drag radials, the car may pop up on the radar more often from time to time.

7 1,200-hp 49 Ford

hotrod.com

While everybody hoots and hollers when a gasoline engine taps into quadruple-digit horsepower figures, compression-ignition engines are much better suited for the task and still rarely get any love when they do. When Scott Birdsall decided to slam a wild diesel in his 1949 pickup, a few minor modifications were in line.

You know, minor details like a tubular chassis and custom everything.

The $225 Craigslist find is now a 1,233-horsepower, 2,000-ft-lb monster that will light you up and smoke you like the trick candle at a nine-year-old's birthday party. Because you're kidding if you think you want to race this old truck. The 5.9-liter Cummins uses a sequential-turbo setup allowing for over 100 pounds of boost to complement a nice little shot of nitrous.

6 Fenderless 1934 Big Block

whichcar.com

It takes a minute to soak up this car in its entirety, which must be appreciated. It looks like a pretty crazy hot rod to the untrained eye. Although that would be accurate, questions about just how crazy this 34 is start to formulate when you see the parachute next to the license plate. Walking around to the front you’ll see why. A pair of 88mm turbos precede the Ford big block in the front and the induction system piping air into the greedy engine is about as one-off as you’ll find. The car was originally supposed to be a nine-second car but unfortunately for no one, it kept getting faster and faster in the design stages. The 598cid powerplant dynos at 1,240 horsepower on 14psi and it can smash quarters in 8.3 seconds at 167mph.

5 1,000-hp Camaro

chevytv.com

The polarizing feud between muscle cars and tuners (or tuners and pretty much everybody else in the world that matters) draws distinct lines between what cars “should” and should not use as equipment. Turbos are on the tuner side, and “should not” be used on muscle cars, says standard logic.

This 1969 Z/28 isn’t having any of that, though.

As if the 6.0-liter forged engine wasn’t enough by itself, a pair of 62mm turbos have been tucked carefully beneath those telling black stripes. This all sums up to the effect of 840 horses in a car that pushes the boundaries of where muscle dares to go (with very nice results, I might add).

4 TT Chevelle SS

pinterest.com

Some guys wear turbos on the inside, tucked down deep and low where nobody can see them. Then there are the show-offs who put them where the world can see them. But this is on a whole new level. This 1,300-horsepower Chevelle is a 540-cid, big-block monster based in Australia. It comes over to say hello every once and a while and show us what a pair of 74mm Borg Warner turbos can do with some built internals and a hydraulic roller cam. The original engine that was removed to make space for this forced-induction setup was a 396cid—respectable enough, but nowhere near what twins can do. (Low nines at 153 miles per hour, for example.)

3 1958 Chevy Apache

engineswapdepot.com

Old Chevy steel can wear a dual set of air compressors on the outside pretty well, but they also work nicely out of sight for use on an as-needed basis. Like when you pull up next to a rice cooker with a tow hook that's got some stuffed animal hanging off of it like a Christmas ornament.

This 1958 Apache was built in Lewisville, Texas by Hale’s Speed Shop to the tune of a 5.7-liter LS1 and a 4L80E heavy-duty truck transmission.

That's much beefier than what originally pushed the truck down the road and the nine-inch rear is the last major component used to vector 700 horsepower from the twin-60mms down to the rear wheels. This thing lays rubber down with the best, so get ready to hand over your presents.

2 1966 Chevy C-10

motonetworks.com

Her name is Tiffany and she loves to show off. She’s built by Classic Car Studio as a rolling advertisement, although live demonstration would probably be a more appropriate term. It’s a shop truck and CCS decided their parts were to be gotten in a proper fashion for a speed shop. But with every imaginable design thought up and done already, they needed something spectacular to really stand out. Tiffany hits that mark perfectly with a slam that tucks the truck’s massive wheels all the way up into custom-fabricated wells. The Nelson Racing, twin-64mm turbos are mild and smooth around town but have no aversion to dropping 750 horses at the flick of an ankle. The guys at CCS say they can easily tune it to well over 1,000 horsepower if they wanted to. (Well, what are you waiting for, guys?)

1 Venom F5

hennesseyperformance.com

In all efforts to adhere to proper form, you really can’t have a list featuring any sort of unnecessary twin-turboing without mention of the prime piece of work that is positioning itself to be the baddest twin-turbo in history. The gnarliest setup known to date belongs to the Venom F5 (built by Hennessy Performance) and it’s basically two gargantuan-sized turbos with a billet aluminum V-8 attached somewhere between them.

Hennessey claims the 7.6-liter beast is good for 1,600 horsepower  and 1,300 ft-lbs of torque at 24psi.

Those figures make them confident that we're going to see the Venom go from a standstill to 186 mph in under 10 seconds and that mankind will be able to pierce the 300 mph barrier finally. No matter what happens, it’ll be exciting to see and even if it can’t hit 300mph, there’s no possible way to justify any of this build as necessary in any way, shape or form. Which is exactly why it’s awesome. The $1.6 million car will feature around $600,000 worth of upgradeable options, and still, most of the 24 cars planned for production are already spoken for.

References: jalopnik.com, dragtimes.com, roadandtrack.com, and musclecarszone.com.