A supercharged 2016 Cadillac Escalade ESV Platinum with 800 crank horsepower is an imposing thought.  Something that big, with that much power surely has to feel like an Iditarod sled being pulled by a pack of African rhinos, or close to it. This video of Hennessey Performance Engineering testing its Escalade HPE800 on the dyno shows us what such a vehicle is capable of, at least power wise, and sound wise.
In terms of power, the Escalade HPE800 puts down 611 horsepower to the rear wheels and about 683 lb-ft of torque. That’s a gain of 191 horsepower and 233 lb-ft of torque over the stock 6.2L L86 V8 powering the factory Escalade family.
Now the sound, the sound is what’s going to make people’s necks snap as they do double-takes when the Escalade in the next lane over goes wide-open throttle to make a pass. On the one hand the audio is absolutely fantastic, and on the other hand one would never expect it from a sophisticated Escalade. Will this be like something we can ever expect from Cadillac originally? An Escalade-V maybe? We hope so.
Comment
That’s not a 2016 Escalade as Hennessey mentioned in the video. It’s a 2015 Escalade ESV Platinum.