I am about to buy a 740 GLE and i heard they were a little gutless and the 114 hp is a proof, but i was wondering if any one here had any ideas on improving hp, last option being ad a turbo?

 

I had a '87, 740 GLE. We named her GRACE, because she was so graceful. If you want guts and speed buy something else. You can get a nice fast turbo for next to nothing these days.

BTW, I put over 400,000 miles on that car. Very nice with low maintenance.

 

turbo will be the best bang for the buck.

 

I agree, the non turboed redblock is a fairly sedate thing, the best you can do is maybe 10% more power with headers and a mild cam. They just don't have the cylinder head to make power, which is why Volvo was so quick to turbo them.
A few options would be to add the Volvo turbo gear as said above, or put a 16 valve Volvo head on it. They're both reasonably serious jobs though.
Other options are engine swaps, the Volvo inline six would be a nice one. I am looking at some options for a tow vehicle at the moment and the Mitsubishi 6G engines are nice and torquey, light and very cheap. V8 swaps are very common and kits are available, a nice mild Ford 5.0 would be a great engine swap.

Regards, Andrew.