how much HP is enough: Poll

I voted for 500, but 400+ is enough in the right car.

Newer cars seem to be very heavy and have a lot of aero and drag, so I guess 600-700 in a road car with all the bells and whistles.

 

700hp is great..but the car will never let you use it. Wanna feel what 700hp really feels like? Drive something without a computer monitoring everything you do..its scary.

 

With all the regulations it is very difficult and expensive to make a car less than 3500 lbs. But as far as drag never has more attention been paid to reducing it. In the muscle car era they were all billboards.

 

Yes, They cant go back now anyway. How do you tell people that are used to 600+ hp cars that they're getting less horsepower?

 

Mark Donahue said unless youre leaving two black lines between the corners, you dont have too much power.

But yeah I agree, nanny cars are not deploying the HP anyway.

Dodge Challenegers can be had with near 800Hp, but the sweet spot is apparently the 485hp scat pack, and even that car at over 4100lbs in widebody is traction limited.

I would say it all depends on weight, gearing, aero, intended use, and also Tq and where that sits, because in many ways Tq is more important than Hp. But in a paddle shift multi gear 3500lbs car, 400-500 sounds more than plenty.

My BBi is supposedly 340Hp and say 3400lbs, it could def use another 100 hp. Ive driven a near 400 hp lotus elsie at 2100lbs, but there was little tq and a very narrow power band so it really wasnt that seat of the pants fast. I drove a caterham 7 with near 300hp and you simply couldnt sanely deploy that power in the lower gears, unless there was a lot lot of space. The Exige V6 track car now has near 400hp now, weights 2400lbs and has 302 ftlbs of Tq everywhere. On track it feels like it could use shorter gearing in 4th and 5th or another 50-100hp, in slower corners 2 and 3 are already more than you can deploy. On road (not that i would drive a race car on road) I "hear" even the stock 360hp feels like superbike fast enough to bounce you into the nearest tree.

A sweetspot is my e46 m3 slightly mapped. 350hp in 3500lbs car works great. it could maybe use more Tq for genral driving.

Seems like the current mustang Gts-350 are ideal. 460hp-528 in a 3800lbs car.

Besides paper numbers are you really going any faster or getting more "thrill" in a 600 hp maclren 600lt vs a 720 Hp 720?

But yes as others have said, hard to talk people who have had "600" hp into a "lesser" 500 hp car.

In the end, power to weight, power band, and traction. But 400-500 is probably good in a road car esp as the newer ones have 7-10 gears.

 

True.

 

Interesting point and it took me a while thinking about it.
The car companies are building and selling ever more powerful cars and we just lap them up. Without the electronic packages few of us would be able to drive them and the roads would just be carnage. Drivers sure aren't getting better on average at least. Assuming legislation doesn't step in where does it stop? Making bigger more powerful engines really isn't all that expensive. Are they going to build and are we going to buy even more powerful cars that the electronics are going to dial down for us and our road and traffic and skill sets are going to continue to prevent us from being able to take advantage of? I am pretty sure the answer is yes. We just can't control ourselves. The answer is always "More".

A friend works for a company who I won't name involved in trying to develop a 1600 HP powerplant for Bugatti. 1600.........
I just looked it up. I guess they succeeded. I know they blew up a lot of motors getting there. 1600 HP available at a dealer near you.

 

agrecwith much of what you say.

In the coming electric car age it seems that 0-60 well below 3 secs is the.norm for a sedan. Therefore a comparable ice powered 4500lbs awd sedan car is going to be near on 809hp.

true above 100 mph eletrcs performance taper off markedly but that’s not the spec
most value.

it’s also true that these bohemotjs are one trick pony’s offering more thrill than driving pleasure.

it’s all about paper numbers and paper spec. Most “fast” cars these days are not so much driven as guided by the operator while a slew of electronics distributes power in a manner where easy control is maintained. The overpowere modems are thrill rides more than the art and experience of driving.

A lot of this became poissible because emissions rules meant cars became computerized and engine combustion efficiency a necessity. The side benefit lots of hp I wonder whether the second coming of the turbo motor we see now would have happened without co2 regs making the turbo comeback. Once again we saw a big leap in power, yet much driving pleasure lost.

escalating hp and escalating weight coupled with traffic means that the old art of driving is being legislated away even as cars get “faster”. Modern Ferrari’s are now pretty close to what an electric Ferrari will be, it’s a new world.

fortunstly there are some great holdout cars, ironically many made in USA, and we have a thriving component car industry reissuing the greats.

 

I'm in slow car fast camp and got Peugeot 106 Rallye recently. 120hp and under 770kg/1700lbs with proper suspension and no drivers aids makes it fun and ITB's sound add their own flavour.

 

This year I am toning down in power and voted 500hp. My 500hp 135i 6spd weighing in at 3350lb gets the job done and great mileage to boot. Cheap to run, great fun. But it’s not as thrilling as my F430 in any aspect except for the torque curve from the small turbo of the Bimmer feels good down low in rpms. The race car is going up for sale because highway bursts have lost their allure. Just too much for the road and belongs at the drag strip.

 

I have a 350z roadster, 270 h.p. stock and a bunch of fun to drive.

I have a 1973 MG midget with a turbo hayabusa motor in it, 339 h.p. at the rear wheels (kept turning the boost down trying to make it driveable) and 1680 pounds. It is a handful at best.

Driver aids in the 458! I keep it in sport mode most of the time

 

Holy hell! You should post some photos of that setup...

 

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400 in the 360 is more than adequate. However, I think having an extra 100 HP (like in a 430) would be better in the race track.

 

I had a lot of fun with a Lotus Elise on a track and it had 120hp. Dry and wet.

420hp in the Stradale was also enough to make me sweat.

 

HP isn't as important as torque lb/ft if you are after acceleration kicks for fun. HP is for top speed and I'm good for about 120 then my eyes hurt. I'd think it would only take 250-300HP to get me to 120 but I'd love to have 1,000 lb/ft of torque getting there!!

 

Not sure how that works but when I'm building something to be fast I'm building it to make horsepower.

 

HP is just a calculation based off torque so not sure it's not "as important" when it's derived from it. HP always equals torque at 5,252 rpm because that's the formula. HP = Torque x rpm / 5252

 

Think of it like this, torque is what accelerates a car, horsepower is what is needed to sustain the top speed.

 

Wheel torque yes, achieved by proper gearing and high horsepower.

And yes to the equation of horsepower, they are of course interrelated however I take the above statement as a car built with emphasis on peak torque and not peak horsepower.

If you are after fastest possible acceleration you do it the other way around.

 

Depending on the weight, 500-600 is a good amount.

 

It would seem, so far, about 70% of us are happy with 500 or less h.p.
Interesting.

 

2006 Z06, 483hp at rear wheels, great on track, very usable on street.
2001 BMW Z3, 225, lot's of fun in canyon driving
1997 F355 385+- hp glorious fun, super well balanced

Here in So. Cal. the best drives are cruising the coast or mountain canyons, HP is not as important as balance, lower mass and a smaller footprint

 

I would not answer that question - different powers could be enjoyable in different cars, so the real absolute "necessary" may be pretty low. On the other hand depending on the category of car it may also be high (for instance I can have fun with my 135 hp Caterham but I think that with 570 hp the 458 is underpowered).