How much Power is too much? And what is the point?

[hawkeye122]

So I see all of these "Tuners" coming out with kits which claim "1000 BHP for your ________ (Usually Mustang, or some sort of Muscle car or Japanese car)

But why? Why on Earth do you need 1000 BHP? Sure, the 3 times a year you go to the local Drag Strip you may impress other car guys, who have similar upgrades. You can't possibly do a Gentlemans Racing series, as i bet it doesnt meet the regulations. But on the road? You can't possibly have a need for 1000 BHP, unless you want to be doing 200, going up a hill. Won't you get caught? Or die?

I know that theres something to be said about being able to say "My car has 1000 Horsepower" Yeah, thats neat. But other than that? Why bother? Has anyone actually driven a 800+ BHP car on the road? Were you scared? What sort of fuel mileage did you get?

 

[Zenith]

A very important topic for modern car culture. I'll post more later, but it really depends more on how the chassis is built than just assigning an arbitrary "max power" limit. An F1 car can be improved with 1000hp, a "road car" usually doesn't gain much once numbers go north of 500hp.

 

[LMSCorvetteGT2]

I would say it depends on the car. If it is a few certain cars like I'm thinking then reinforcing the chassis can be done to make it work, but why do it is the question. Most times I think it's people who are either A building a street legal drag car like street mod, super street mod or tuner mod class. Those who have the money to blow usually just do it to brag.

I say 550-800hp for me is a reasonable amount.

 

[GDII]

I haven't really driven fast cars. My current car has 100rwhp and can do 0-100 in 9 seconds which is obviously rather slow. I'd be happy with 200hp at the flywheel in my current car as its just a road car.

My brother has a ver5 WRX RA Ltd .Bone stock and it's got too much power for a road car. It's not very usable and the turbo is quite violent paired with the close ratio box. It's rated at 280hp which isn't much compared to what you can get but still very fast.

 

[The Vanishing Boy]

-> I would think the reason is to compensate the situation.

 

[shmogt]

Why wouldn't you want a 1000hp car. You know how funny it would be when someone in a Ferrari pulls up and tells you, you have a nice car and ask how much HP it has. Than you respond 1000hp and just floor it disappearing before the guy can even blink. For everyday use obviously you don't need that much or really ever need that much, but you always want that much. It's just cool to say.

 

[White & Nerdy]

Probably because the fuel costs absorb money they'd rather spend on a 70" TV.

 

[LMSCorvetteGT2]

Why wouldn't you want a 1000hp car. You know how funny it would be when someone in a Ferrari pulls up and tells you, you have a nice car and ask how much HP it has. Than you respond 1000hp and just floor it disappearing before the guy can even blink. For everyday use obviously you don't need that much or really ever need that much, but you always want that much. It's just cool to say.

You don't need a thousand horsepower to do that. Hell half of that will do the trick if the car is set up right especially with a good top end set up at least for most of the Ferrari's I've seen it will do the trick.

 

[C-ZETA]

It all depends on the car in question. GT-Rs and Supras, for instance, have absolutely endless potential, but in stuff like S2000s, where light tunes are the norm, you can't go too far. I know it makes that Amuse S2000 GT1 Turbo a whopping lie.

 

[hawkeye122]

Unless your car has either A. Some form of advanced traction control that "Knows" that you've given it 1000 hp to play with , or B. You actually are a VERY good driver, Wouldnt you be stuck spinning your wheels while the Ferrari used Launch control, and left you looking like an idiot with ruined tyres?

 

[Roo]

Depends what tyres are on the car. 50bhp would be too much if you tried to put it through a bicycle tyre.

In the normal world, it depends on what you want. My Land Rover had 111bhp when it left the factory, and you wouldn't want much more than that for the vast majority of offroad driving.

Why do people want more power? Superiority. Dominance. One-upmanship. 'I have more power than you, so I must be better than you and are therefore more likely to get a woman to have sex with me than you are', which is pretty much the root of everything anyone does, from a fist fight in a pub car park to arguing about something on the Internet.

 

[LMSCorvetteGT2]

Unless your car has either A. Some form of advanced traction control that "Knows" that you've given it 1000 hp to play with it, or B. You actually are a VERY good driver, Wouldnt you be stuck spinning your wheels while the Ferrari used Launch control, and left you looking like an idiot with ruined tyres?

Not necessarily. It all depends on setup however, I doubt there are too many people around that can properly put a 1k of hp down appropriately on the street without getting squirley and wrecking into some random neighborhood.

Look up the Josh Kalis Camaro. It's a 69 Camaro twin turbo running 1000hp owned by pro skater Josh Kalis, the car is well planted when launched on city streets and obviously does wonder during rolling starts. Nelson Racing engines builds some amazing street cars that occasionally run anywhere from 700 to 1500 hp+ on the street. It all depends on the setup.

 

[McLaren]

Because it's all about the acceleration & adrenaline that gets going when you realize just how fast 1,000Hp can propel you. The ability to use it is however, on 1 of 2 places; the strip or the street.

If you really want to see the point of a 1,000+Hp cars, TX2K is just around the corner which hosts the largest gathering of 1,000Hp cars in the nation for drag racing, car shows, & some unofficial late night parties.

 

[Biggamehit]

Most "tuners" tune because its a hobby however when you compete in a sport you should only have as much power as needed to keep up with competition.

I am not a big power guy my R33 just happen to sorta easily make 433whp after I got done tuning it but I didn't need that to drift. I actually downgraded power a bit to make the car more competitive as I could not afford a big fast spooling turbo.

 

[Ibonibo]

^Last 3!! Finally!!
@Bigga: that's the number I try to get in my R33

not a lot of people upgrade / tune their engine to brag. Those are idiots.
Most people do it because they want a faster car, they just want an awesome engine.
It's always a good feeling when an engine is built together, has more HP, and doesn't explode when starting it for the first time.
Also for a lot of countries, 1000hp is not even to get legally (except factory cars) and probably never will be.

Now on the topic, how much power is too much?
Driver aside, when a car becomes uncontrollable due to too much power.
I have seen a pink RX7 from UK, flying around 800hp. Well first the chassis twisted, then turbos were eaten,... They got it stable now, but that is the kind of limit.
Driver back in, when a car is not controllable anymore within the capacities of the drivers abilites

And to show a stock car with 280hp(more 330hp) upgraded to 1000hp but still drivable

 

[astrosdude91]

If you really want to see the point of a 1,000+Hp cars, TX2K is just around the corner which hosts the largest gathering of 1,000Hp cars in the nation for drag racing, car shows, & some unofficial late night parties.

Hey that's all in West Houston/Katy! Mere minutes from my house! I do my banking sometimes at that Chase in the beginning of the video.

Those cars aren't much more than dyno toys or drag cars. You couldn't take that kind of power to a track and run very well. I'd much rather have an Elise or S2000 or something for a road course.

 

[homeforsummer]

But why?

E-penis. Definitely e-penis.

Seriously though, I'm sure 1k bhp is quite good fun, in the right scenario.

Personally, it's of very little interest. I'm all about having as much fun as possible with as little as possible, so as long as a car is fun to drive I don't really care how much power it has.

Obviously there are different limits for different things. A healthy amount of power makes motorway driving more relaxing. My 100bhp car has enough performance for the motorway, but a 200bhp BMW would be better, and a 500bhp Bentley pretty darn relaxing, I'd say. Flex of the toe to change your speed by 20mph or more.

That said, you can completely flip all that around in London, say. A 500bhp Bentley would feel big and unwieldy, and frustrating that you couldn't use even a 20th of that power stuck in traffic. The BMW would be quiet and comfy, but the power would still be largely irrelevant. My 100bhp car is easily nippy enough for tight streets, but even 100bhp is slightly excessive in 20 and 30mph limits.

Then there's UK country roads, which are usually a bit too tight and twisty to make use of anything over about 200bhp, and even with that sort of power all it does is shrinks the straights - it doesn't make the corners any more fun. My old MX5 was perfect for those roads, with only 115bhp-odd, and it was fun to drive flat-out, which in a more powerful car would quickly get to illegal speeds, so...

Yeah, horses for courses. I can appreciate that 1,000bhp would be fun if all you ever did was endless drag races or freeway pulls (or you really did need a bigger e-penis), but I can be perfectly happy with a lot less. Power, I mean

 

[Famine]

My current car has 100rwhp and can do 0-100 in 9 seconds

Than you respond 1000hp and just floor it disappearing before the guy can even blink.

Wouldnt you be stuck spinning your wheels while the Ferrari used Launch control, and left you looking like an idiot with ruined tyres?

It's nothing to do with nought-to or launches. How many times and how much distance do you cover in daily driving doing nought-to? Nought-to is only any good on a drag strip or promotional material - gets you nowhere in the real world (especially 0-60mph, as very few traffic lights exist in 60mph zones 'cos doing 60mph into the back of immobile traffic is a bit dangerous).

Spare power makes for easier preservation of speed and quicker overtaking - less time exposed to danger. More power = more spare power.

 

[TheCracker]

Why wouldn't you want a 1000hp car. You know how funny it would be when someone in a Ferrari pulls up and tells you, you have a nice car and ask how much HP it has. Than you respond 1000hp and just floor it disappearing before the guy can even blink. For everyday use obviously you don't need that much or really ever need that much, but you always want that much. It's just cool to say.

That totally depends on where you live. I can't imagine many places in somewhere as densely populated as Europe where you'd get chance to exercise a 1000hp car.

Drag racing is little more than a niche curiosity here because our road systems just don't cater for the stop light 'racing' that obviously inspired drag racing to evolve into a form of organised sport in the '50s.

Other than bragging rights, 1000hp is next to useless over in this part of the world.

 

[LMSCorvetteGT2]

Hey that's all in West Houston/Katy! Mere minutes from my house! I do my banking sometimes at that Chase in the beginning of the video.

Those cars aren't much more than dyno toys or drag cars. You couldn't take that kind of power to a track and run very well. I'd much rather have an Elise or S2000 or something for a road course.

^ Exactly my point, most people build them to be dyno queens and brag about it and do the occasional stop light to stop light run. Others do it to build quarter mile monsters and so on. However these aren't montain cutters and track cars to have an all around car and be stable without going to far over the edge anywhere from 700-1000 in a street car is highly questionable.

 

[JJ72]

I usually think power as an ingredient of handling.

Some car can be made more fun with more power, while some doesn't. Having slightly too much power for the chassis to handle often makes a fun car. But in the same token, having little power and relying on momentum to create speed is also very fun.

But overall I tend to think the addiction of big power, heavy weight, and fat tires is the downfall of modern performance cars.

 

[Leonidae@MFT]

Also, more power means less sword-fighting with the gearstick in traffic. Properly done tune for daily driving will offer broader torque band, thus improving the useable rev range and MPG when you don't need to drop a cog or two to overtake someone.

 

[waweng]

i have a car more power but its so hard to drive T_T

 

[McLaren]

You couldn't take that kind of power to a track and run very well. I'd much rather have an Elise or S2000 or something for a road course.

Well, of course, but that's not exactly a fair statement to make, as these guys aren't building these cars for road racing to begin with. They are however, built strictly for racing. As far as dyno queens go, there are almost virtually none. The event is all about power & how fast you can go. As some attendees have said, if you're not making a 1,000+Hp, you're not going to competing with any of the big cars this year.

If you want road course action, then the event simply isn't for you. If you want to see 1,000Hp street-driven, daily drivers built by regular car guys like you & me, then it's a great opportunity to see the fastest cars in the US & quite possibly, in the world. There are cars at this event that can pull 60-130Mph in 3-5 seconds; we're talking cars that could quite possibly drag a Veyron up to 200Mph.

Riding in some of them is quite an awesome experience, regardless of what racing you prefer.

 

[sumbrownkid]

Speaking of Veyron, I'm surprised that no one has attempted to squeeze another 1000 HP into that W16.

 

[TheCracker]

Speaking of Veyron, I'm surprised that no one has attempted to squeeze another 1000 HP into that W16.

Nobody would want to foot the bill if anything went tits up. I doubt VW would touch one with a barge pole if they'd been modded in any substantial way.

 

[Bottoz]

How much Power is too much?...

When you can't run 30 minutes on a road course because your water cooling and oil cooling can't keep up and/or you keep breaking things, you have too much power for the vehicle. Anything up to that point is gravy.

 

[sumbrownkid]

Nobody would want to foot the bill if anything went tits up. I doubt VW would touch one with a barge pole if they'd been modded in any substantial way.

With the amount of money that people have to be able to buy this car, I really don't believe that. It has to be more technical side than financial.

 

[kingcars]

It can be done if done properly. Here's a guy on another forum I go to who has an 89 Mustang coupe pushing north of 1200hp with completely stock body panels. He runs drag radials and drives it ~50 miles to the track, runs it, and drives it home. Has actual interior as well. In this video, the car runs an 8.87 @ 160mph in the 1/4 mile.

http://www.streetfire.net/video/887-second-pass-on-17-inch-drag-radials_198475.htm

 

[squirlybmx]

"Too much" comes into factor when the engine loses a substantial amount of reliability and you don't have the financial ability to regularly maintenance the car. "Too much" is non existant when you're a millionaire who can afford a Lamborghini and the twin turbo kit for it. People want 1000+hp for the same reason people buy cars with high hp figures. Because they simply can, and having 1000+hp at your control is damn exhilerating.