To many folks, the 1998 Corvette may not be a stand-out so far as project vehicle fodder goes. For Shawn Larvick of Twisted Speed & Performance, it was just the prod he needed to build his next “business card on steroids.”

Shawn started Twisted Speed & Performance about two years ago. He says things started off slow, but now the shop is packed and they’re cranking out projects. “It’s just me and two guys at the shop, Joseph Nichols and Stevy Gibson.” We asked Shawn how he acquired the car and he admitted, “The story of me getting the car isn’t very cool or anything like that. I just traded another car to get it.” So why horse-trade for a ’98 C5 Corvette?

Shawn explains, “We really built the car for advertisement. We just wanted to get our names out there to show what we can do.” Looking at the photos, it’s obvious they can do a LOT! Okay, we’ll admit that having FOUR turbos poking out from under the heavily-clearanced C5 hood may not be for everyone. And those four exhaust pipes weaving painfully close to the windshield has Safelite technicians quivering in their urethane-soaked boots. But, if you’re looking to grab hold of the public eye, those four turbos and flame-spewing pipes are much better than all the showy fonts you could possibly stuff on a small business card.

While this C5 has plenty of shock-and-awe, there’s more to the build than just four whirly-birds and a few pipes. Down under all the plumbing, Shawn explains that the engine has all forged goodies inside to handle the boost. The engine was balanced and blueprinted and marches to the tune of a Brian Tooley Racing, Stage II camshaft. Shawn added a set of Fuel Injector Clinic 1,650cc injectors driven by a Holley Terminator X max ECU to fuel this beast. There’s also a Holley high-ram intake which gets stuffed full of atmospheric goodness by those QUAD ON3 turbos; two are 60mm while the other two are 75mm in size. Shawn states that “setting up the quad turbos wasn’t too hard, it just took a lot of time.” Reportedly, it took about 100 hours to build all the piping for the system and to get it all set up.

We use Fuel Injector Clinic because they’re just the baddest on the planet, we use them on all our builds.- Shawn Larvick, Twisted Speed & Performance

The entire angry orchestra is placed in front of an RPM Transmissions Level X 4L60E transmission. Beyond that, Shawn states the rest of the drivetrain is stock and holding up well considering those meaty “I can’t believe they call this tire tread” slicks that try to shift the earth’s rotation with every blip of the throttle. To help keep the car from twisting, and serve as a steel cocoon should things go bad quickly, the guys at Twisted installed a custom cage of their own design.

The TS&P team did all the bodywork to the car. Here it is before the wrap was applied. If the turbos didn’t tip you off this isn’t a stock C5, then you may have missed those drag slicks, deck spoiler, and drag ‘chute!

After the guys at Twisted Speed & Performance got the once-little-red-Corvette assembled, it was off to Adam Holmes at Holmes Tuned to get the fuel and spark set to optimum levels. Once that was done, the car churned out 1,000 horsepower on the dyno. Shawn admits the engine has more in it, but the transmission might not, so they set the limit at 1K ponies for now.

The car served the folks at TS&P well, traveling the show circuit and twisting the necks of enthusiasts everywhere it goes. But how do you outdo yourself when your opening salvo is a 1,000 horsepower, quad-turbo’d C5 Corvette? Shawn wasn’t too committal but simply stated, “I probably won’t build another quad-turbo setup, because a new year means a new build. But we DO want to do something crazier, even if it doesn’t contain four turbos.”

We asked Shawn what he intends to do with the quad-boosted Corvette now that it’s made a full round of the show circuit? His reply, “Since the car is done now, we’re going to use it as a mobile billboard and go get groceries in it once a week.” Spoken like a true enthusiast!