Russian Mechanics Make a V16 Out of 16 Chainsaw Engines, Stuff It Into a Lada

Lada’s venerable, Fiat 124-derived sedans lend themselves surprisingly well to outlandish modifications. We’ve seen one with 14 wheels, we’ve seen one walk on metal legs, and we’ve seen one dropped on tank tracks, but as far as we know this V16-powered creation is the first of its kind. Don’t mistake it for an exotic supercar’s power plant, though: The home-built mill was assembled using 16 individual two-stroke, single-cylinder chainsaw engines.

Unsurprisingly, the same Russian mechanics that brought you the 14-wheeler and the walking Lada came up with the idea of building a V16 using components you can find at a garden center. The project started with 16 chainsaws made by a relatively obscure company called Hüter. The team at Garage 54 then removed the engine from each chainsaw, stripped the parts they didn’t need, and began looking for a way to arrange them into a single unit. The solution was to position them in a V; if it’s good enough for Bugatti, it’s probably good enough for a Lada.

The setup is surprisingly clever. The engines are mounted on a custom-made frame and they collectively spin a metal rod via a toothed gear welded to each crankshaft. There’s a series of cables hooked up to link the 16 cylinders to the gas pedal, while the flywheel, the starter motor, and the manual transmission are standard Lada parts. After a series of small setbacks, the engine started with a glorious puff of blue smoke.

Dropping a 51-inch-long engine into a Lada isn’t as hard as it sounds if you’re handy with a welder: Garage 54 cut off the front end, extended it, and welded it back together. The team decided not to fabricate a hood to show off the engine and took its long-wheelbase car on its maiden trip.

Each chainsaw engine has a displacement of 58 cubic centimeters and an output of 4.5 horsepower. Yep, the decimal is super important here. Multiplying both figures by 16 gets us a 928-cc 16-cylinder rated at 72 hp. For context, the biggest engine that was available in these old Lada sedans was a 1.7-liter four-cylinder, and the output didn’t exceed 80 hp during the model’s decades-long production run.

Against a great many odds, Garage 54’s monster of a Lada starts, idles, and moves under its own power, though getting it going is apparently a little tricky and it’s certainly not quick due to the engine’s relative lack of torque. It takes a little over 26 seconds to reach 37 mph from a stop.

Fear not: There’s a build out there for you if you’re dreaming of an old Lada with supercar-embarrassing performance. In 2019, someone stuffed a 400-plus-horsepower 2.0-liter turbo-four sourced from a Lancia Delta Integrale into one, threw in BMW E36-sourced chassis components for good measure, welded in the rear doors, and called it a job well done. Four years later, a 2JZ-swapped 2105 was auctioned for $40,000.

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