Hitting 200MPH before the end of a half mile takes some serious horsepower. Doing it reliably, again and again and again, though, requires a lot more than just horsepower- it takes a car that has been meticulously prepared for the task and built specifically to achieve a single purpose. That’s what it used to take, anyway. Now, all it takes is a Switzer Performance Goliath GTR.
The Heart of Goliath
“Goliath” is the nickname given to the cars representing the top rung of Tym Nissan GTR performance ladder. The cars live up to their name, too, with the first Switzer Goliath to enter a standing mile event shattered the overall GTR speed record when it crossed the line at more than 252 MPH. With results like that, it’s obvious that these 1800+ HP cars are meticulously prepared … but they’re far from the one trick ponies you might expect. “These aren’t cut-down race cars. The Goliaths are real, street-worthy cars,” explains Switzer, who builds the cars out of a sprawling, 80,000 sq. ft. facility on the outskirts of Oberlin, Ohio. “They’re not jittery. They don’t lunge forward in traffic or punish the driver with harsh downshifts. You can really drive them on the street.”
You can really drive them on a half mile airstrip, too- as the owner of this particular Switzer Goliath Nissan GTR discovered at last month’s half-mile runway event in Ocala, Florida, when he blasted across the half mile finish line at more than 211 MPH on the car’s third pass.
“Third pass, ever,” clarifies Tym. “We finished the car just in time for the customer to make the event. This was a real, just delivered to the customer street car,” he adds. “Not a 1-off shop car.”
That 211 MPH pass was enough to earn Efi, the Goliath’s owner, top honors in the “Fastest Forced Induction Vehicle, Privateer” and “Fastest Overall Vehicle, Privateer” classes. It was exactly the sort of result, in other words, that you’d expect a “Goliath” to achieve.
“We couldn’t be happier with the result,” said Switzer. “With Goliath, we promise our customers a real car that has a full AC, that has a full audio system, and that’s smooth enough that they can drive it every day if they want to- but we also promise them unbeatable performance. After today, nobody can deny that the Goliath delivered exactly that this weekend.”