The idea of shoving the biggest, most powerful engine around into smallest vehicle you can find is nothing new, hot-rodders in this country have been doing it for the good part of the last century, but more recently it’s been the Germans that have been showing us the way. A few years back we saw a twin-turbocharged W-12 shoehorned into a tiny Volkswagen Golf hatch and now a V-8 has been plugged into the engine bay of a Mercedes-Benz B-Class.

While the W-12 powered Golf required some heavy duty modifications, including having its engine relocated to the trunk, somehow Mercedes’ engineers managed to squeeze a 5.5-liter V-8 from an E-Class sedan into the tiny engine bay of the B-Class, an area normally reserved for a compact four-cylinder mill.

What makes the feat even more amazing is that it was completed by a group of apprentices at Mercedes-Benz.

The process involved swapping the B-Class’ four-cylinder engine with a 5.5-liter V-8 rated at 378 horsepower and 391 pound-feet of torque. The apprentices also installed a seven-speed G-Tronic automatic transmission and needed to convert the car to rear-wheel drive in order to fit the whole drivetrain. Here they installed a rear axle from an old E-Class sedan.

With all the modifications complete, the V-8 powered B-Class, appropriately named the B55, will sprint from 0-62 mph in 5.2 seconds and reach an electronically limited top speed of 155 mph.

Interestingly, AMG, Mercedes’ official go-fast division, had no direct input in the project.
    
[AutoWeek]