Only in the America do we have V8 Powered Chainsaws

A V8-powered chainsaw sounds like the kind of thing only a muscle car fanatic would build in a garage — until you learn the record for cutting speed belongs to a company on the other side of the world. From a 508-pound Buick-powered monster nicknamed ‘The Predator’ to an Australian saw built purely for marketing, these builds prove a V8 will make anything sound like it belongs on a drag strip.

The video is just a Facebook clip of a chainsaw screaming like a small-block at redline — no context, no build sheet, just a blur of chain and sawdust. But somewhere out there is a two-man saw weighing over 500 pounds, built around a genuine V8 engine, that can drop a 30-inch log in under a second. The catch: the record-holder for cutting speed didn’t come out of a Detroit garage or a backyard in Alabama. It came from a lumber town half a world away, built by a company that sells chainsaws for a living — not muscle cars. So is this really an only-in-America stunt, or did somebody else do it better first?

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The Predator: A Buick V8 Chained to a Log

The best-known V8 chainsaw build is nicknamed “The Predator,” built by Robert Andrews of Enumclaw, Washington. He chose a Buick V8 specifically because its aluminum block kept the weight manageable for a saw that already tips the scales at roughly 508 pounds fully assembled, then machined the block and rebuilt the heads and internals by hand. The finished saw makes around 300 horsepower and spins its chain at speeds near 200 mph, enough to set a world record: slicing through a 30-inch log in 0.88 seconds.

The Australian Challenger Nobody Saw Coming

The other famous entry isn’t American at all. Whitlands Engineering in Australia built a chainsaw around a 4.1-liter Holden V8 making about 120 horsepower, built purely as a marketing stunt for wood-chopping competitions, and it can still cut clean through 550mm of hardwood in roughly 2.4 seconds. Between the two builds, the “only in America” bragging rights get a little more complicated — but the appeal is the same on either side of the Pacific: take an engine built for a muscle car, bolt it to something it was never meant to power, and see what happens.

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