Over the weekend, Chevy unveiled the chest-thumping Corvette ZR1, the fastest and most powerful production Corvette the world has ever seen. That they chose to hold the reveal of this great American nameplate in Dubai says a lot about current world affairs.
Regardless of its debut city, we’ll enjoy the fact we live in a world where one can purchase a 755 horsepower Chevy with a factory warranty. Certain corners of the internet weep into their Ovaltine about “the good old days,” hemming and hawing over the superiority of muscle machines from the ’60s and ‘70s. They were great cars, to be sure, but today’s gonzo levels of horsepower have us wondering – and asking you – where’s the upper limit for factory hot rods?
We all know Dodge laid down the first salvo of the in-the-affordable-realm horsepower war with the Hellcat, in both Challenger and Charger form. A full 707 of the roartiest Detroit horsepower attached to a chassis not fundamentally changed in an automotive eon was just the ticket to draw out all the superlatives from this author’s thesaurus.
They upped the ante, of course, with the Demon. Fun fact: Dodge announced just on Friday that the 2018 Demon has officially started shipping to dealerships. This means customers in the snow belt will get their 840 horsepower rocket sleds just in time to put them away for winter. Those in the southern states will be roasting tires, not turkeys, for Christmas.
Even the Shelby GT500 of 2011 was no slouch, boasting a robust horses out of its then-new 5.4-liter aluminium mill. Shedding over 100 pounds compared to the cast-iron lump available in the previous model year, the engine in the ’11 GT500 made 550 hp.
Which brings us neatly back to the ZR1. Its LT5 6.2-liter V8 is topped with a supercharger uses GM’s first dual-fuel-injection system, employing primary direct injection and supplemental port injection to make its power. Those horses, all 755 of them, are routed through either a seven-speed manual or an eight-speed auto with paddle shifters.
We blew through the 500 hp mark at the beginning of this decade, zipped past 600 hp not long after, and now find ourselves with several 700 hp options from which to choose. Not to mention, of course, the 800 hp club over at FCA. Question is, where do you think the upper level of horsepower is in a factory car?
[Image: General Motors]
Growing up in the 70’s and struggling to get 300 hp out of a V8…it is a beautiful thing.
300? GM’s 7L V-8 was making 180hp.
some of us grew up driving tercels
and if you raced a Chevette it was fun as hell. It was a race between lights.
Now its a tap of the gas and done. That 650 hp Corvette will get you there a blink faster than the 450 hp one, if you don’t get pulled over and have a cop draw his gun that is.
The 750 hp ZR1 will do nothing really any different than the 650 version other than maybe go a little faster on the track, and not many people ever go 200 at the track.
Golden age of HP? – Yes.
Honestly I thought the golden age of horsepower started when you could get an LT1 from the factory with 300 reliable hp. Everything since has just been more gravy on the potatoes or more frosting on the cake.
Upper limit? That’s for engineers, the market, and CAFE to decide.
And insurance companies. That begs a question: what does it cost to insure one of these 700+ horsepower monsters?
A fortune. I suspect that most people buying them aren’t using them as a DD, but are likely getting a “collector car” policy that allows them to drive 2000 miles/year or something similar.
Not as much as you think. Really the added insurance costs are for the increased costs associated with the unique parts on the vehicle.
I submit for example my GT350.
It has a carbon fiber radiator support and costs 900 dollars to replace.
The engine is 19,000 dollars if its destroyed.
Wheels will set you back 4,400
Tires will run 1,600 – 2,000 depending on where you source them
Mag shocks average about 600 bucks a corner
Brakes another 4,500 bucks
Hood 2,200 dollars
Head lights are 2,600 a set
Front end stripes will run close to 1k to replace
and so on.
If you break everything past the A pillar on my car its more than 50% of the value of the car even if by some chance you could repair it rendering it a total loss in most cases.
If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.
Less than an exotic for sure.
@tnk479
You may be surprised to find out they are typically cheaper to insure than the smaller engine vehicles.
I discovered that back in the 90s, when the 3000GT VR4 was cheaper than the 2WD SL. The explanation I was given was simple- the type of person who buys them is less likely to crash or file a claim!
I found the same thing again when I bought a Chevy Camaro SS for myself and a V6 for my wife. The SS was CHEAPER to insure than the V6, which just reaffirmed my understanding.
Today I own exotics that are still cheap to insure. The most expensive car I’ve ever insured was an F350 Diesel, followed by the V6 Camaro of all cars.
My Maserati and Ferrari weren’t too bad at all, about $400-600 a year.
Everyone’s situation is different due to insurance company, driver age, coverage levels, geographic location, safe driver discounts, etc. but for my 2013 Viper with “only” 640 hp I pay about $120 per month for full coverage (I don’t insure the car all year). That gets me a 7500 miles per year limit. For comparison that is about twice as much as I pay for the same coverage on a 2011 Sienna minivan. Not unreasonable in my opinion and probably comparable to what a ZR1 or Hellcat would run.
My Hellcat added $500 a year. I don’t DD it and have 4 other cars though.
I cant speak to the super top end of things, but I braced for impact when I told my insurer I bought a grand cherokee srt. He came back and told me that it would be 20 dollars less than my A4 every 6 months….
What do you mean by “factory” car? A (former) Big3 model?
The Bugatti Veyron and Chiron (or whatever the new one is) siblings are raising their hands and saying “oh, oh, me, pick me” over on the other side of the classroom, while Koeniggsegggg 1 and McLaren P1 are shooting spitballs at each other.. And the Porsche 918 is kissing up to the teacher..
I think he meant the ones where there is a dealership i every town. You know, the ‘common’ manufacturers.
I know in slang terms, Bugatti’, Koeniggsegg and McLaren are often referred to as custom shops because their cars are hand built as opposed to assembly line built. Factory typically refers to something being “mass produced”, like on an assembly line.
The 918 was also hand built:
https://porschenewsroom.s3.amazonaws.com/porsche_newsroom/produkte/918-spyder/hochtechnologie-in-handarbeit/aufmacherbild/949b8fc7-165c-4351-98e0-205f788b8196_teaser_700x395x1_5.jpg
But that isn’t the “technical” term for factory. These could all be called “factories”, but at least from my experience, calling something a factory car meant it had to be assembly-line-mass-produced.
Therefore any car that was customized after the factory (Saleen or mera for example, even if it was factory-blessed) and anything hand built (Those you shared for example), would not be considered “factory” despite technically being built in a factory.
But with that being said, I don’t think that’s a technical definition, that’s just how we’ve always seen it used at least here in the mid-west.
I do not believe we are anywhere near the upper limit. Eventually someone will figure out a hybrid approach I suspect. Tesla is a great example of a car that can produce serious power in Ludicrous mode what would happen if you were to combine that with a hellcat like power plant.
As I noted on a previous thread, the concern really is can the above average earning public handle this level of HP on the street. I thought I saw on Yahoo or something that some model from Mexico was killed when the bone head she was riding with was driving his Lambo way too fast on the street in L.A. High incomes don’t always buy common sense.
“Eventually someone will figure out a hybrid approach I suspect.”
LaFerrari (950HP), McLaren P1 (903HP), Porsche 918 (875HP) all have a hybrid drive system, though Porsche’s is the only one that seems to be aimed as much at fuel economy/driving in battery mode as it is performance.
“can the above average earning public handle this level of HP on the street. I thought I saw on Yahoo or something that some model from Mexico was killed when the bone head she was riding with was driving his Lambo way too fast on the street in L.A.”
That’s always been an issue. There was Paul Walker and the Porsche Carrera GT, there was that tech editor who split an Enzo in half while racing a Mercedes SLR on the Pacific Coast Highway…hell, Rowan Atkinson and his McLaren F1? Do a little googling and you’ll see that a couple dozen of the 450 Ferrari Enzos built have been wrecked.
Shows what I know of the super car market. If LaFerrari can produce 950HP than the ZR1 is already behind schedule it would seem.
Noone expects a LaFerrari to function as even a weekend car. There is no parts inventory, no extensive testing, nor much of anything else. Pretty much a couple of handbuilt prototypes assumed to be babied by wealthy collectors. While this is a Joe Sixpack ‘Vette, sold to guys who’ll want to show off it’s acceleration at every (in)opportunity, and buy their consumables at Pep Boys.
“While this is a Joe Sixpack ‘Vette, sold to guys who’ll want to show off it’s acceleration at every (in)opportunity, and buy their consumables at Pep Boys.”
No. This is a Corvette, but not a “Joe Sixpack” Vette. By comparison, the current Z06 starts at $80k, if you take the top 3LZ trim level you’re at $90k before you even do any customization of colors, stripes, or performance packages. Breaking $100k building a Z06 is trivial, and I suspect that if you opt for some of the more exotic options you can hit $115k-$120k. I would fully expect this ZR1 to start in that $110k+ range, or certainly end up north of there once you’ve optioned it out.
For fun, while on a conference call, I went to the Chevrolet page and built my own 2018 Z06. With the specs that I would want I came up with a MSRP of $112,630. I believe we are safe to say this is beyond Joe Sixpack ‘Vette owner’s means.
I expect the ZR1 is going to eclipse the $140k mark with ease. Let alone adding the ADM.
Oh, and for the record I was kidding when I said the Corvette was behind schedule compared to Ferrari. I get the LaFerrari and ZR1 and not even remotely close to comparable. I would bet the LaFerrari requires some sort of proof of purchase of previous new Ferrari’s to prove that you are a true friend of the crown so to speak. Were as the ZR1 is step right up and sign here, did you want 72 or 84 months financing?
Well, the LaFerrari was a limited run, invitation-only affair. They only made 500 (and additional 200 of the Aperta variant), with an asking price was well north of $1 million. God knows what they actually cost once customized.
So if you’re playing the raw HP game you could look at the Bugatti Veyron or Chiron, or any of the other boutique makers like Koenigsegg to find cars with 1000HP or more.
I also think it’s more to do with driver skill and availability of a road worth driving on. I live in town, where most speed limits are 25 or 35 MPH. The reality is that unless you live out in the country with plenty of unsupervised roads, you’re not going to drive anything like this that approaches it’s potential. I think the main problem we have with high-horsepower cars for the common man is that there is nowhere to safely drive them.
The solution: more racetracks!
For Sure!
WE have exceeded the needs of Horsepower to the point where barely anyone cares anymore.
I know us gearheads say, “hey look at that big number aren’t I cool”, but seriously, you can’t use 750 HP anywhere but a race track, and even THERE you can only use it if your on the edge of Professional status.
I mean I finally settled for a boring Hyundai Sonata DD, and I don’t mind it. It has TONs of power, and its on a boring budget hyundai. thats where the golden age of power is. I can’t even think of a car that doesn’t have enough power for DD duty, when I remember in the 80s thinking “My gosh my car can’t get up this hill”. Having no power haunted me every day, the lack of power in every car made you think, “some day I will have a car with POWER!!!”.
A 10 HP boost changed your life. A 40 HP boost was worthy of bragging.
Today $20k can get you a brand new 320 HP car. Thats nuts. Thats more power than you really even need, and thats something almost any new car buyer can afford. For $30-40k your well into the 400s. Seriously getting to the point where it becomes a PROBLEM on a DD. I didn’t mod my 2010 camaro SS because “what the heck would I do with more power”? when I remember when I bought my 3000GT VR4 I was in heaven about having such a powerful 300 HP beast, but I quickly spent thousands making it a little more powerful.
We are in the golden age of horsepower not because we have a few cars with 800 ponies that are relatively affordable, but because even our cheap cars for non-enthusiasts have more power than most people need.
No one “worries” about horsepower anymore. It doesn’t hold anyone back anymore, and if you want to brag to your neighbors about a big number you’ll never use, its CHEAP. You can pretty much get whatever horsepower you want off the shelf.
Today is the golden age of horsepower because it barely matters anymore. Its almost like computer processing speed. When I used to buy computers, the processor was outdated after 2 years, and it was never enough. Today, a quality 8 year old i7 processor still gives way more power than 99.9% of users want or need. To me thats horsepower, its less important than it ever used to be.
Proof is even in automotive journaling. It used to always be about 1/4 mile time. Now its all about nurburgring times. Because raw power… raw horsepower… is largely a non issue.
Which is your point. we are in the golden age of horsepower- the point at which horsepower essentially becomes obsolete. Where normal people no longer care about HP numbers when they buy a car. Where HP holds no one back, and where enthusiasts can get more than they ever could use with the check of an option box.
BUT we are not yet at its upper limits. Especially as cars become more specialized, we’ll see big numbers crawl up on the upper echelons of the market.
“Its almost like computer processing speed. When I used to buy computers, the processor was outdated after 2 years, and it was never enough. Today, a quality 8 year old i7 processor still gives way more power than 99.9% of users want or need. ”
Indeed. My 5 year old laptop got an SSD upgrade at year 2, and it’s still more than fast enough for anything that I or my wife need it for. And that was the last new PC that I bought.
“We are in the golden age of horsepower not because we have a few cars with 800 ponies that are relatively affordable, but because even our cheap cars for non-enthusiasts have more power than most people need.”
Exactly this. I think that’s /thread.
I find my 220hp Golf GTI more fun than the 326hp BMW M235i it replaced. 200-ish HP in a 3000lb car is way more than enough to be entertaining. Over 300 and you just spend too much time restraining yourself, lest you enter licence-shredding territory a might too quickly.
But that BMW was a HEAP of fun on the Autobahn. Shame we can’t have nice things in the US. No regrets, but I doubt I will buy another car that fast again. I just don’t care about speed enough.
The limits for horsepower are:
– traction in highest practical gear AND
– maximum speed the tyres can carry
:)
– Aerodynamic stability once the body starts moving due to less than racetrack-smooth roads, and unpredictable wind, at the kind of speeds these power levels make possible even on only moderately long stretches of public road.
Powerful cars have always been terminally fast on unlimited length airstrips and at Bonneville, but they are now getting to power levels that make them more similar to motorcycles: Where you can “easily” click off speeds where aerodynamics start to matter a lot. All it takes is a good visibility straight section of road, holding the throttle open for a few more seconds, and a certain disdain for safety and traffic laws.
I think we really entered the golden age of HP when the 2003 Altima 3.5 came out. 240HP in a cheap family sedan, and kicked off a HP war in a segment people actually shop in.
If you’re talking about sports cars, then the Mustang V6 topping 300HP was your watershed moment.
The ludicrous track toys are fun and all, but getting good, usable horsepower to the everyman is the real accomplishment.
What hp war in family sedans would that be? We haven’t come too much further since that time. The new 2018 Accord 2.0T (which replaces Honda’s V-6) makes only 12 more hp than the 2003 Altima 3.5 you mentioned.
The GTI and WRX have all seen very modest horsepower gains in the past 15 years. As I recall the 2002 WRX made a big splash when it arrived and it offered 227 hp. 15 years later, today’s WRX offers 265.
A BMW 328 around 2004 made 180 hp. Now it offers 252 hp.
It’s primarily just “muscle cars” and trucks that have made the really big gains.
Go back a year to the Accord V6 and it’s something in the neighborhood of 280 HP. Most V6 family sedans are approaching 300 HP, which is why the manufacturers are OK with swapping them out for slightly less powerful but more fuel efficient turbo I4s.
I say this a lot, but if you look at many of the family sedans in that 250+ HP range (which usually requires the “optional” engine upgrade) you’ll get performance comparable to what was considered “sports car territory” a little more than a decade ago. Do we really need 300+ HP family sedans? I always thought that their market segment was defined by “safe and sensible.”
There was absolutely a family sedan hp war, but I think it stopped a good five years ago. In the early 2000s, the very good V6s were just under 8 seconds when paired to an auto. By 2007, Nissan and Toyota were cracking off near 6 second runs with Chevy, Mazda and Honda soon following and by 2012 I think Ford was the only entrant in the segment who didn’t quite hit that mark, although their engine allowed Mazda to.
It’s way more power than the typical buyer knows what to do with in that segment so I’m not surprised the arms race has shifted to rated fuel economy.
Yep. Also the 2018 Accord cracks off a 5.5 0-60, even with the 2.0T. That’s nuts for a “sensible” family mover, but I’m not complaining.
Who got 5.5 out of a front wheel drive accord? Is the 10-speed auto really that quick? That’s quicker than an A4 quattro with a 7-speed DCT.
That HP war is done, and the consumer won – with as much power as they actually *want* in that segment, easily available.
(Also remember that today’s turbo engines have a lot more area under the torque curve, especially down low, and that’s what people actually drive, not horsepower.)
I agree. I was a sophomore in college when that came out, and a lot of my friends bought them. With decent brakes/tires/suspension they were real highway weapons, even in automatic. I was shocked.
For me, as long as a car has a triple digit 1/4 mile trap speed, I’m good. Everything beyond that is superfluous. Even better is that now you can get a car with that speed that will return high 20s combined. Anyone complaining about car performance these days needs their head examined.
@ a5ehren – Minor quibble: The Camaro actually beat the Mustang (and Challenger) by one model year with its 300-hp V6. There was a brief period of time when, to Ford’s chagrin, the V6 Camaro and V8 Mustang had similar hp.
But yes, I totally agree with you about the Altima. It ushered in an era when most of the models in the Camcordibu segment received a very (IMO) powerful V6 as an option. (Well, I guess the Passat had a VR6.) We went from adequate I4’s and reasonably powerful V6’s in the 2.8 to 3.3-liter class to peppy I4’s and very powerful V6’s in the 3.3 to 3.8-liter class.
Re: the LT5, good to see GM using dual injection. DI-only provides a nice power-bump, but the anti-carbon maintenance is a step backwards from no muss, no full port-injected engines.
Having come of age in the 1960’s it was nothing but despair a decade later living at the anemic levels horsepower and torque had dropped to by then. Worst case example for me was a 1975 Chevy Vega we had in the company fleet that was so bad that in order to allow the thing to chug up a hill with two passengers we had to lighten the load by leaving the spare and back seats back in the garage. Never thought then we’d ever see these days when even an average DD can be had in excess of 300hp and nearly the same levels of torque. If this is the golden age before the autonomous pods yakking at each other through the grid, then I say bring it on! I can’t wait for a Honda Fit with horsepower of a Honda Civic Type R.
I agree with arach. What is the real world use for these cars? What percentage of owners ever take them to the track, and even if they did…they would soon realize that something like a Lotus Elise or even a Miata would be just as much fun…so again, what’s the point? I guess if you like to go to the drag strip, then they kind of make sense.
I tend to just laugh when I see supercars on the street nowadays…just another rich guy with no perspective. Seriously it’s like buying a John Deere and 30′ cultivator to turn over the vegetable garden in your back yard. Cool toys, but excess to the point of stupidity at the same time.
I concur and I think the word you are looking for is, ostentatious.
I also agree. Although I whole-heartily think people should be allowed to spend their money wherever they choose, this race to the top of HP mountain is getting kind of ridiculous. It is very analogous to the pick-up wars at the other end of the power spectrum.
Pick-up Buyer: “I’m going to buy the newest Ram pick-up!”
Other P/U Buyer: “How come?”
P/U Buyer: “Well, it has 20 ft-lb of torque and can tow 100 lbs more than the Ford Super-Duty”
Other P/U: “Are you ever really going to use all that power?”
“Well no, but it’s the bad-assiest so I got to have it.”
@Blackcloud
I had a 1000 lb-ft F350 Diesel. I really needed that power to get my dog to the dog park. After a couple of years we decided to sell it and get a used F150. A number of people gave me a hard time about selling my “nice” truck to buy a “small” truck.
the funny thing is, it has had zero impact in our life besides putting money into our wallet… but I probably wouldn’t have realized that if I didn’t first buy the “bad-assiest” truck to realize I didn’t need it.
Full disclosure I did have a race hauler, so I exaggerate a little bit on only hauling my dog.. but your assessment is right. Unless they owned a horse farm or raced with me- which honestly probably is more than 50% of them… most other people I met with those trucks really just wanted to feel cooler than everyone else.
Real world use is for long distance, GT type driving out in the open West (Or Middle East/outside Dubai…). With this kind of power, you can get to big speeds even on less than airstrip length stretches of straight road. Which, in practice, makes it much easier to justify taking back roads, instead of wasting away on I15, or some other freeway; since the total time spent, won’t be that much longer.
An even less socially acceptable use, is to blow past people left of the double yellow along Wilshire Blvd in LA. With enough power to instantly be able to tuck back into “your” lane when faced with opposing traffic. Not condoning it (in a car. On a fast bike, I’m less rigid…), but I saw one of those new Bentley SUVs drive like that a few days ago. You can’t really do that “safely,” without enough power to almost instantly move ahead of any car that is next to you at will.
Until the weird guy in the Camaro or BMW you passed gets all road ragey on you and either tries to pass you back or shoot you.
I think the question has an obvious answer (“yes we have”) but is also a little shortsighted. I feel like we’re on the cusp of a paradigm shift when it comes to how we drive. Just because more and more horsepower is available these days has little impact on how the majority of us actually drive. Even the 250-300 hp that became typical of family sedans in the last decade is actually effectively being taken back with turbocharging. Turbos allow the driving public to retain ‘the right’ to same or more horsepower, but also the reality of simply not using most of it most of the time, given that it was given to them not out of necessity, but for essentially marketing reasons. So if you realize that more horsepower basically should mean more speed, the question becomes, are we collectively driving faster? The answer is a resounding no. I mean I love Baruth’s stories of racing as much as the other guy, but at the end of the day, that’s not the collective experience of the American driving public.
P.S: For the racing world, yes these are golden times. And I applaud them!
I’m hoping that in the future when all cars are autonomous, the power will actually lead to higher speed limits. Suddenly driving from Chicago to Denver at 200 mph in an autonomous car will really connect the middle of the country.
Reino, that would be awesome. 120mph alone would be massive improvement.
The fuel burn cruising north of 150 mph would be bizarre.
It would make a fast private aircraft seem like a Prius.
Although teenage me would disagree strongly, currently-pushing-40 me would say that rather than the “golden age of horsepower”, I believe we’ve entered the age of “horsepower jumping the shark”. As others have pointed out, people don’t really care about horsepower anymore when they shop for vehicles. These gaudy figures we see now are just bragging points for enthusiasts, and are nearly useless in the real world. This realization for me came several years ago riding with my buddy in his 2007 Z06 Corvette (which made a “paltry” 505hp remember). He gunned it, and I swear it seemed like we were doing 120+mph before I even had a chance to blink. Dare I say it actually scared me a little bit. I literally turned to him and said “Dude, you can’t use this power ANYWHERE on the street!” to which he replied “Yeah, pretty much, unless I want to end up dead or in jail”.
If youre talkign track, Power to weight is more important than Hp, and overall weight is really important, a 3600lbs vette is lardy. Tires will wilt after a few laps, and no matter how big the brakes they too will at the very least burn up the pads mightly quick.
the Zr1 may be bale in a magazine test to turn a really fast single lap. I seriously doubt its 15 lap average will hold up, or hold up for a full day, unless you have a truckload of tires and pads.
There is a reason why a Vette Gs is infinitely better as a trackday car, and turns better consistent laps over the day, than a heavier and “faster” z06. Hp is cool, weight is the enemy, 3600lbs is lardy.
The Zr1 is great for its glorious excess. If you missed out on a new L88 in the 60s this is the one to buy keep and collect. The asat hureah of the excessive front engined vette and an apex of the genre.
Its a car as excessive as an aventador, and as useful too. The world is all the better for it, but as car to buy and use(its perforamnce), its really purposeless, unless you have an autobhan..
The new mid engined vette if it weights a lot less, will be a far more useful car, on and off track.
One other really great thing about the ZR1, its not designed to meet euro pedestrian rules, do designers are far freer to do a great front end, as opposed to a schnoz..
On less than smooth roads, aka all roads in America, keeping the engine up front makes for better high speed stability.
There’s just not enough scope for reliable front end aero on a road car, to keep a light front from wandering on the bumpy, off camber, heavily crowned roads that seem to be the norm on any road where you could even conceivably use this kind of power. And the lower polar moment of inertia that is the raison d’etre for mid engines, just make them more skittish on that same type of road at speed. Very talented, experienced and maximally focused racers may be able to just drive through all that, and then use the greater agility and more optimal weight distribution of a mid engine to get through tighter stuff faster; but for normal people just wanting to get somewhere fast, the slower movements of a front-rear car with a big engine, is just less tiring on long drives.
Porsches (aside from the front engined Panamera, which is about as good as a real world GT gets (Never driven a F/R V12 Ferrari…) ) all starts using lane width as speed builds. Much more so than supposedly less performance oriented cars, like the Aston DB9, AMG Benzes and the like. I doubt its just for tradition, that Ferrari keeps putting the V12 up front in their big, fast GTs, while building their more sports/track agility focused cars mid engined.
Put this in the CT6.
Blasphemy. Cadillac is about purses, fountain pens, and Chinese chromed plastic, not horsepower.
Yes and no.
All but the basest of crapboxes, and Subarus, are at least acceptably powerful now. The sporty end of the market is well into kill-yourself-if-you-actually-use-it overpowered. But…
1) All but the basest of crapboxes are also as smooth as a Lexus, so despite being fast they don’t feel it.
2) RWD is extinct outside of cramped pony cars and 6000 lb pickups, even those are stability and traction controlled into perfect civility, so all of the fishtailing, rubber laying, and telephone pole wrapping symptoms of an excessively powered car are also gone.
3) The roads that we get to drive these stupid fast vehicles on are more congested than they have ever been and no amount of horsepower will do anything about the next car’s bumper directly in front of you.
3) is a real PITA that is unlikely to ever improve. Even something with the performance envelope of a GTI can be difficult to rationalize in an age where the endless parade of doddering apathetic drivers keep freeway entrance speeds at 55mph and every curving road outside of town congested.
Which is why a beat up, 3 cylinder Geo Metro; on the narrowest, hardest rubber tires obtainable, is about as good as it gets for actually having fun while driving in urban/suburban environs…….
And why America needs Kei cars. Now!!!
To this point, my beater 4cyl Ranger with a 5spd was a hoot to bomb around in, especially when roads were wet. You really had to pay attention to available traction.
Growing up a 14 second car was stupid fast. It was serious money to build a 13 second car and anything that ran 11’s was modified to the point it was never going to be street legal again and was probably only reliable enough to run 1/4 mile at a time anyway.
I can get 11 seconds for under 6 figures (Nissan GTR) with a warranty and daily drive it now. The Z06 is in the 10’s for 20,000 less. All with reliability that would make your 92 Accord blush. Horsepower wise, yes, golden era. It has been democratized to the point that it takes a truly ludicrous number to make people notice.
What I want to see now is someone come up with a way to make cars safer for pedestrians that allow for hood lines to go back down and metallurgy that allows for rollover safety that allows for windows to come back and A, B, and C Pillars that aren’t measured in feet to return. While we are at the golden era horsepower wise, design wise we peaked too early and we now find ourselves stuffing these marvelous engines into cars that are right up there with the 70’s big bumper era only with more tacked on gewgaws than the worst 50’s offenders.
+googol
We may be in the golden age of hp, but it appears to trending more toward a luxury item in terms of pricing on mainstream vehicles. Gone are the days where you can get the desirable engine in a modest trim. The new Camry is a good example of this trend. If you want the v6, you need to get the top trim with pretty much every option added to get the good engine. Hemi powered vehicles appear to be becoming less accessible price wise to me as well.
CAFE nonsense makes it imperative to limit the number of HiPo versions sold. And/or build enough margin into them, to justify potential CAFE penalties.
Absolutely this. Ten or a dozen years ago the good engine was a rounds-to-zero cost option available on every trim of every vehicle. Everyone from Honda to Hertz to even Hyundai had row upon row of cheap family cars with cloth seats and a great V6. You could have a V8 in your Jeep or Explorer or 4Runner for a thousand bucks and everyone that cared what they drove did.
The $12,000 Touring Titanium Reserve package powertrains haven’t gotten much better than that, because they didn’t need to, but the cheap ones that most people settle for have clearly gotten worse.
Yeah, I think this whole one-upmanship with HP is purely academic. I stopped reading motorcycle magazines years ago because I got bored with the “The new GSXRCBZX does a 1/4 mile 0.1 seconds faster than last year’s now obsolete model” nonsense. I just stopped caring anymore as none of those bike were even remotely useful for the type of riding I did.
I bought a used 1994 Corvette (300 hp, 6-speed manual) a few years back and, frankly, got bored with it quickly. Where I lived at the time traffic was heavy and law enforcement was even heavier. I couldn’t even enjoy that level of performance on the street and decided to get another Miata instead. I just realized I had more fun with it. Now a new base Corvette has something like 455 hp and you’ll look like the loser that didn’t get the Z06 or ZR1? That’s insane.
The new ‘Vette is amazing in any trim level, no doubt… I just don’t care about the performance difference.
My 8-year-old has suddenly gotten interested in cars. He has a bunch of toys, including a model Pagani Huayra, an Aventador, Viper, and a Miura. He was asking which one I’d rather drive. Frankly, I chose the Miura. It would seem more like an experience… the styling, the noise, the involvement of manhandling that thing… I just couldn’t care less which one does 160 mph and which does 240 mph.
Kudos to Chevrolet for making the ZR-1 and extra hurrahs for making it available with a real manual transmission. If it were my money and I had to buy a Corvette, though, I’d still rather buy a 1963 coupe. I think it would be more fun on the occasions I’d drive it.
Yes.
And since the rise in horsepower is being matched by a decrease or at minimum leveling off of fuel consumption, I don’t think this golden age can be stopped by another gas price spike. When we have 700 hp cars getting in the 20s on the highway and 300 hp cars in the 30s, not to mention hybrids/electrics, gas could be $6/gallon and we wouldn’t see another malaise era in my opinion.
The only thing that will stop this rise is self driving cars becoming ubiquitous. When a computer is pressing that pedal for you, there just isn’t the thrill of the power anymore. Not to mention the inherent liability of designing a 1000 hp car that can drive itself. I think there will still be powerful cars for sale for those who can afford them, but the typical passenger will be driven in a car with just “sufficient” power for daily driving.
Give me a Chevy with a 250 six/Powerglide combo and I’ll do just fine.
Not everywhere.
2016 E350 – V6 with 302 HP
2017 E300 that replaced it – 4 cylinder with 240 HP.
The golden years for internal combustion engines I think. Performance may march on but we’re in the twilight for the gas engine. In a scant 30 or 40 years owning anything with an internal combustion engine as its only power source will be a novelty.
Not a bad send off I think. Even if your EV with an electric motor at each wheel powered solely by the sun and batteries only needed when your too far off the grid to beam electricity to the car and equipped with tires featuring sub-atomic Velcro allowing it to climb walls at any speed and controlled completely by wire with the AI version of Lewis Hamilton interpreting every clumsy response making even your 2050 Toyota E-rolla capable of beating the best F1 technology circa 2020. Those conveyances will never be as great as what we have now. Despite having been mostly insulated already from the driving experience even now there is something to these high horsepower dinosaurs with their imperfect power bands and transmissions requiring synchronicity between both feet and one opposing hand as they bluster about imitating the first golden age of performance when the world had fallen in love with the automobile for the first and perhaps last time.
I’ve got 173 HP in my 200, which is 13 more HP than the 3.3 V6 in my ’93 Concorde. Both are more than adequate for freeway driving (yes, even merging and passing) and I could never understand the negative reviews the 200 with the 2.4 received.
I also have 320 HP in my ’06 Ram 5.9 I6 Cummins, but don’t be fooled, it’s not a speed racer by some accounts because it’s built to haul. It’s probably one of few Ram HD’s that are running at stock HP. Whenever I take my truck, the brodozers inevitably seem to want to challenge me to a race (and then they’d buzz off). A few of them have a “dude, wtf???” expression when they glance at my wife and I, where both of us fit squarely in the same age as the “bro” demographic, towing a fifth wheel. Nope, not the silver haired retirees you were expecting.
I’m quite content “slow poke” vehicles. I like to cruise along in the right lane, so something with a lot of HP would be of no use to me.
“Dodge laid down the first salvo of the in-the-affordable-realm horsepower war”
I find that statement highly inaccurate. You can say they were the first pony factory car to 700hp. However, the sticker is higher than the previous king – 662HP GT500 from ’13-’14. MSRP for the Hellcat STARTS at $64k while the Ford started in the high $50k.
Yes, we entered it around 25 years ago.