HP increases in production cars compared to racers of a few years ago

Saw an ad here on the website about the new Mustang, 5.0 liter car, with 412 HP and 400 lbs of torque.............and 26 mpg

and some here, might say, well so what??



In 1967, the Cosworth ford 3.0 liter v-8, was setting the standard for HP and the V-12 Westlake -eagle was challenging it, with the V-8 sprewing forth a rumored 410 to 425 HP over the maybe 390 HP of the v-12...

along with less than 300lbs of torque. This was enough to dominate the f1 world, and destroy all real competition as the westalke died from lack of reliability and ferrari could never beat it....

and that was with full racing exhausat--no muffler, no pollution controls, no catalytic converter, lousy gas mileage (remember Clark ran out at Monza) and at a price that was about 25k 1967 american dollars (which would be what???a 100k now????)....a rebuild after a few miles, like maybe 1500 miles???

So I am no expert on current cars, and I am sure folks like Easy can point to better engines, of lesser capacity, even doing bettter than these Mustang figures, but still, it suddenly dawned on me that there has been an amazing increase in performance in production engines in the last few years.... :eek:

and pretty much taken for granted by everyone..... :(

I still wish I had a lotus type 49.....

IT is the testament to electronic engine management really Markabilly. The fact is, modern electronic timing and fuel injection systems make the modern engine efficient in ways not dreamed of in the 60's.

One only has to look at how that Cosworth in 68 when Jim Clark was starting his season and compared it to the modern f1 motors. F1 engines now are probably 30 to 40% LIGHTER, they are smaller in displacement, and they put out 800 to 900 hp with no turbos. They also are efficient enough to allow teams to put on enough fuel to run the length of the race and still not have the car look like a whale.

AS for street cars, well, mileage of your average Toyota can stretch into the 2 to 3 hundred thousand miles in its lifetime. Most cars in the late 60's, if you got 60k miles out the car before you junked it, you did well.

Technology has made the modern car so much better than what was around in the 60's, it is just incredible.

What's even more amazing is that the engine in that Mustang is crap (in terms of bhp/ton) compared to other engines on the market too!


There are still big improvements in the pipeline
http://green.autoblog.com/2010/02/24...ases-the-emis/

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The Twin-Air engine in 84bhp guise uses 15 per cent less fuel and has 25 per cent more power than a standard 1.2 8V engine, which returns 55mpg.
Next to a 45mpg 1.4 16V engine, Twin-Air uses 30 per cent less fuel and has similar power and performance figures. CO2 emissions in the Twin-Air engine are claimed to be less than 95g/km.

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Basically twinair is a brand new 900cc 2 cylinder engine with electrohydraulically operated valves which comes in both turbo and n/a guises.

Gaining power and performance whilst getting better fuel economy by 10-30%? No brainer.... The engines above are mere cooking versions of what's capable if this technology is actually used to make a proper performance engine with this technology.

P.S part of me kind of hopes a piano falls out of the sky in Top Gear style and crushes our 500 so we can get one of these babies to replace ours with the insurance money :p

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Originally Posted by markabilly

Saw an ad here on the website about the new Mustang, 5.0 liter car, with 412 HP and 400 lbs of torque.............and 26 mpg

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Whether it's the Mustang, the Corvette or the new Camaro, I have to admit that I am rather surprised and impressed by the mpgs they get. Subaru and Mitsubishi have been producing 2.0 liter 4 cylinder turbos for years that put out roughly 300 hp. But neither the WRX/STI nor the Evo can soundly beat an mpg figure of 26. Not that people who buy high performance cars care so much about mpg's, but I am impressed that a 5.0 liter 400 hp V8 car can get as good as or better mpg's than I do with a MUCH smaller engine and less horsepower (though it's the full-time AWD that really kills my mileage).

I own some Ford shares (not many) and I admire Ford for what it's done over the past few years. So I'd really like to buy a Ford vehicle at some point. If they'd just put a hot 4 or 6 cylinder turbo (300hp +) in a good, sporty, SMALLER, daily driver car (like the Focus or whatever), make it AWD (which I HAVE to have at this point) and sell it for less than $35 grand... maybe we could talk. TBH, if they made an AWD version of the Mustang with IRS, I might be tempted to try one of those too! Chrysler did it with the Charger, so it is possible to do... but maybe the demand wouldn't be enough to justify it.

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Originally Posted by Jag_Warrior

Whether it's the Mustang, the Corvette or the new Camaro, I have to admit that I am rather surprised and impressed by the mpgs they get. Subaru and Mitsubishi have been producing 2.0 liter 4 cylinder turbos for years that put out roughly 300 hp. But neither the WRX/STI nor the Evo can soundly beat an mpg figure of 26. Not that people who buy high performance cars care so much about mpg's, but I am impressed that a 5.0 liter 400 hp V8 car can get as good as or better mpg's than I do with a MUCH smaller engine and less horsepower (though it's the full-time AWD that really kills my mileage).

I own some Ford shares (not many) and I admire Ford for what it's done over the past few years. So I'd really like to buy a Ford vehicle at some point. If they'd just put a hot 4 or 6 cylinder turbo (300hp +) in a good, sporty, SMALLER, daily driver car (like the Focus or whatever), make it AWD (which I HAVE to have at this point) and sell it for less than $35 grand... maybe we could talk. TBH, if they made an AWD version of the Mustang with IRS, I might be tempted to try one of those too! Chrysler did it with the Charger, so it is possible to do... but maybe the demand wouldn't be enough to justify it.

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Well 4wd tends to kill mpg somewhat.

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Originally Posted by Daniel

Well 4wd tends to kill mpg somewhat.

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Yeah, the parasitic power loss is pretty high too. A guy at a dyno shop told me it was around 35%, but I don't know how accurate that is. In the summer time and in dry weather, I wish that I could switch off the AWD and just have RWD. My mpg's would be much higher... and the car would be quicker too!

It is amazing when you consider the overall performance advances down to the "average" car. The new Mustang ran a 12.7 in the quarter mile, bone stock.

And the six cylinder Mustang is a 14 second car.

Just imagine what SVT could do with this thing. :D

Daniel....you can say what you like about the 500, but If I show a good looking lady a 500 Fiat, or a Roush Mustang and ask her which guy looks better in it, man you are in trouble. The American V8's in a muscle car say good things about the guy driving it on a visceral level.

That said, us men secure in our masculinity but smaller budgets like the 500!!!

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Originally Posted by Mark in Oshawa

Daniel....you can say what you like about the 500, but If I show a good looking lady a 500 Fiat, or a Roush Mustang and ask her which guy looks better in it, man you are in trouble. The American V8's in a muscle car say good things about the guy driving it on a visceral level.

That said, us men secure in our masculinity but smaller budgets like the 500!!!

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I was merely talking about engine technology Mark :p I feel manlier just driving Caroline's car :p

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Originally Posted by Mark in Oshawa

Daniel....you can say what you like about the 500, but If I show a good looking lady a 500 Fiat, or a Roush Mustang and ask her which guy looks better in it, man you are in trouble. The American V8's in a muscle car say good things about the guy driving it on a visceral level.

That said, us men secure in our masculinity but smaller budgets like the 500!!!

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Which is part of the problem in the car market. As people buy cars that make them "look like manly man" rather than that what suits their needs best.