Jay Leno's GMC Syclone

Jay Leno does a walk around of his 1991 GMC Syclone. He is pretty knowledgeable of the truck.  He says he has owned it since new. It looks to be in pretty good shape, but the cladding could use some polish.  I wonder if he has a Typhoon too.

Top 10 Muscle Trucks : Hemmings

This article is about 5 years old now, but it still holds pretty true. You might see a Raptor in there if it were updated. Here is what they had to say about the Syclone and Typhoon.

GMC Syclone and Typhoon
Most of the rest of the muscle trucks on this list were chosen because they were at the pinnacle of performance in their day. But the Syclone and the Typhoon are still at the top of the performance truck heap. What started out as an idea from the program manager at GMC to stuff the Buick Grand National's turbocharged 3.8-liter V-6 into the S-15 morphed into something a little more sinister--a turbocharged 4.3-liter V-6, making 280hp and 360-lbs.ft. of torque, backed by an all-wheel-drive system and lowered suspension. Body cladding and special interiors completed the package, which became the Syclone pickup in 1991 and the Typhoon SUV in 1992-'93, both produced by Production Automotive Services for GMC, and both capable of mid-13-second quarter-mile times. Like the Buick Grand Nationals, owners either hermetically sealed the trucks or they modified them to within an inch of their lives--the web site www.syty.org has reported a Syclone clicking off a 9.89-second quarter-mile time.

Robert has gone 8's in his V-6 Syclone. They are still a bit of an oddball truck.


Source: Hemmings

1992 GMC Sportmachines. Meet the 1992 GMC Syclone

1991 GMC Syclone Promotional Video

GMC Typhoon on the dyno

12.11 and 11.95 GMC Typhoon at Pomona

This is before my GMC Typhoon was stolen and partially stripped. Ran though the fence at my house.  After these runs, I did one last set of runs, with a 11.85 best time.   Mods on the truck were fairly extensive. Turbo, cam, heads, pistons/rods, Accel DFI.

GMC Syclone and Typhoon

It all started way back in 1990 for me. Maybe even before then. Hot Rod, Car Craft or one of those magazines was showing the S-10 pickup with a 3.8 liter Grand National engine. When the truck finally did end up getting produced, instead of the honestly better Buick 3.8 liter engine, it came with a turbocharged version of the 4.3 liter V6 Chevrolet/GMC engine.

 When the trucks first came out in 1991, my familys business was exporting to Japan, and we had one customer that purchased a couple of them. The GMC Sylone had a short run, of only really one year. There were a couple of 1992's, but just a few.  For 1992 GM released the GMC Typhoon. The Typhoon was the SUV version of the Sylone. A little more practical than a turbocharged all wheel drive pickup that doesn't haul anything but ass.

My Typhoon, and a Japan bound Typhoon

I got my Typhoon in December 1992. It was a little less than a year old, with about 30,000 miles on it.  From then, I spent a lot of time with it, drag racing, street racing, and cruising all around the US.  Eventually it would end up getting stolen, recovered, and I would blow the engine up one last time. That was around 1999, and since then the truck has been parked. Pretty sad.

Sometime, I think it was around 1997-1998, I got a GMC Syclone. It had some issues, had been repainted gunmetal grey, missing driveshaft and some other pieces.  I drove that for a while, hurt the engine, rebuilt it once. Broke the trans a few times.  The last time I broke it, I parked it, and its been parked since. Both trucks need some fixing, and some motivation to actually do it.  My involvement with the Skyline GT-R, took a lot of my time, and money.  Now I need to start working on them again.