5 V8 Engines More Powerful Than The Ford 7.3L Godzilla

Ford’s 7.3-liter “Godzilla” V8 earned a lot of attention when it debuted under the hood of F-Series Super Duty trucks for the 2020 model year. It wasn’t just from heavy-duty pickup truck buyers, either, but also from fans of the American V8 engine in general — and rightfully so. The Godzilla’s 430 hp and 485 lb-ft of torque are impressive figures, but that was just part of the story. What really makes the Godzilla special is the way it stands out from other modern V8s on the market.

Despite being an all-new engine design from Ford, the Godzilla forgoes modern tech like overhead cams and forced induction. Instead, it’s a classic pushrod V8 that delivers its power with old-school, big-displacement simplicity. But how does this brute of an engine stack up against other modern V8s in terms of output? We’ve rounded up five different V8s that outdo that mighty Godzilla when it comes to horsepower — albeit with some significant asterisks when it comes to both price and purpose.

For this grouping, we’ve limited our selections to naturally aspirated gasoline V8s currently available in new vehicles, excluding V8s with superchargers or turbochargers, as well as turbodiesel engines. While all of these V8s indeed outdo the Godzilla in peak horsepower, many of them are built for entirely different types of vehicles, and comparing their specs truly helps bolster the Godzilla’s reputation as one of the more unique V8 engines of the modern era. 

One smaller V8 engine that outpowers the Godzilla comes from right within the Ford family. That engine would be the tried-and-true Ford 5.0 V8, often known as the Coyote. Ford currently offers a few different variants of its DOHC 5.0, with the more yeoman F-150 pickup version already making 400 hp. It’s in the modern Mustang, though, where the Coyote leaps ahead of the Godzilla in peak horsepower. 

In the standard Mustang GT, the 5.0 makes 480 hp, and that number jumps to 500 hp in the fast and highly-entertaining Mustang Dark Horse. However, being a big-displacement truck motor, the Godzilla’s 485 lb-ft of torque easily outpulls the 418 lb-ft of the smaller, higher-revving 5.0. And as you’d expect from a truck engine, the larger 7.3 makes its peak torque and power at significantly lower revs than the Coyote — 5,000 and 4,400 rpm, respectively, versus the Dark Horse’s 7,250 and 4,900 rpm.

Comparing these two engines is very fascinating. Both are modern, naturally aspirated, mass-produced V8 engines from Ford, but that’s about where their similarities end. In that sense, it’s a lot like the old days when American carmakers offered both high-winding small-block V8s for performance cars and larger, more utilitarian big-block V8s for their heavy-duty trucks. 

When Ford released the Godzilla engine, the most notable thing about it wasn’t just it’s size, it was the fact that it used the old school, overhead-valve pushrod design, which Ford had moved away from when it began introducing its modular, overhead cam V8s in the 1990s. Chevrolet, on the other hand, has stuck with pushrods and has plenty of V8-powered models in its lineup.

In terms of truck engines, Chevy currently does not have any naturally-aspirated V8s that outpower the Godzilla, though its 6.6-liter V8 HD truck engine puts up a decent fight in both horsepower and torque. And with the Camaro now out of the picture, you need to move over to the Corvette lineup to find a naturally aspirated Chevy V8 that outpowers the Ford 7.3.

The entry-level C8 Corvette Stingray, which is not “entry-level” at all when it comes to performance, is powered by the LT2, a naturally-aspirated 6.2-liter pushrod V8 that makes 490 hp as standard or 495 hp with the performance exhaust option. What about torque? At 470 lb-ft, the Corvette comes close to the Godzilla’s torque output. Since it’s a smaller performance car engine, though, the LT2 only hits that number at 5,150 rpm, a few hundred more revs than the Godzilla.

With naturally aspirated V8s going out of favor around the global industry, Toyota is one of the only non-American manufacturers to offer a naturally aspirated V8 of any type, let alone one that outpowers the Ford Godzilla. That engine is the 5.0-liter DOHC 2UR-GSE V8, which ranks among the most powerful engines that Toyota has ever built, V8 or otherwise. 

Offered in the Lexus LC 500 Coupe as well as the IS 500 sedan, which it discontinued in 2025, the 2UR-GSE makes 471 naturally aspirated horsepower. As you’d imagine from a significantly smaller, DOHC engine used in a luxury performance car, the 2UR’s advantage over the Godzilla does not carry over to the torque department. Rated at 398 lb-ft of torque, the Lexus engine is down nearly 100 lb-ft from the workhorse Ford 7.3 — totally expected considering the very different types of vehicles these engines power. 

A closer Toyota V8 to the Godzilla, at least in terms of vehicle, would have to be the now-discontinued 5.7-liter from the second-generation Tundra and Sequoia. While Toyota has never offered a true heavy-duty pickup that would need an engine as large as the 7.3-liter Godzilla, the 5.7’s 381 hp and 401 lb-ft were — and still are — impressive numbers for a naturally aspirated V8 of its size. 

Of all the naturally aspirated V8 engines currently on the market, the one that comes closest to the Ford Godzilla in displacement, design, and output might be the 6.4-liter HEMI engine. Although this version of the HEMI isn’t currently available in as many vehicles as it once was, you can still find it under the hood of the Jeep Wrangler 392 and the Ram HD pickup.  

In the Ram HD, which competes directly against the Ford Super Duty, the more utilitarian version of the 6.4 HEMI makes 405 hp and 429 lb-ft of torque, both lower than the Godzilla. In the Jeep Wrangler 392, though, the 6.4 HEMI makes a more potent 470 hp and 470 lb of torque, outdoing the Godzilla by 40 horsepower but with 15 lb-ft less torque. 

Of course, you can find HEMI V8s that significantly outgun the Godzilla and both horsepower and torque — you’ll just need to add a supercharger and some Hellcat badges to do it. We shouldn’t bring Hellcats into this conversation, though, as Ford has its own supercharged V8s in offerings like the Raptor R and Mustang Dark Horse SC that go head-to-head with the Hellcat. That’s a comparison for a different time.

The Chevrolet LT6 V8 from the C8 Corvette Z06 is an engine that, beyond being a naturally aspirated American V8, could not be more different from the Ford Super Duty’s Godzilla 7.3. The Godzilla is a huge, pushrod V8 designed for pickup trucks, while the LT6 is a race-bred DOHC V8 with an exotic flat plate crankshaft designed to take on some of the world’s fastest supercars.

So in the real world, the groundbreaking LT6 powering a mid-engined American supercar should have no business being compared to a workhorse Ford pickup V8. And in terms of power, the LT6 absolutely destroys the Godzilla with its 670 hp, about 240 hp more than the Godzilla. But while the LT6’s 460 lb-ft of torque is absolutely incredible for a naturally aspirated, 5.5-liter engine, the Godzilla’s 485 pound-feet still gives it the win there.

In fact, the DOHC V8 in the Z06 actually has slightly less torque than the pushrod V8 in the base Corvette C8. Such is the nature of small-displacement, overhead cam V8s compared to larger pushrod engines. And as for comparing the exotic Chevy LT6 to the more blue-collar Ford 7.3, the fact that one can even mention these two engines in the same sentence shows just how strong and varied America’s current V8 offerings are. While there was a time when it seemed widespread engine downsizing could spell the end of the naturally aspirated V8, both the throwback Godzilla and all of these other options show that the V8 is alive and well.