How much horsepower is too much?, for a road car.... Options

[tadink]

Hey all -

I've been looking at options for increased HP and have run across some crazy stuff, and that got me thinking about "how much is too much"?

This would be an occasional track car, AX often, mostly street, preferably reliable.

I've seen recently, in no particular order: 3.2L pretty stock, 3.3L race prepped turbo, 2.7 or 2.8 race prepped, v-8 twin turbo (IMG:style_emoticons/default/confused24.gif) , and other various mixes of suby-turbo, McMark's turbo 1.7L project, etc etc.

so, for you high HP guys out there - when does the car get just too silly to be practical on the street? 300bhp? 400bhp? 600bhp? 900bhp?

and what makes it not so enjoyable to drive around 'normally'? One guy described his 2.7 race engine as just too high strung for the street - - - so that means that you have to get into higher revs to get the power from the cam? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/confused24.gif)

edumacate me pls......

td

[Andyrew]

Autox? You wont get much benefit from over 250hp given good tires. Track? Depends on the track and the suspension setup, but the chassis doesnt take over 500hp very well.

I think 300-400 is a really good range.

The problem on the street is to much torque, As you can see in the video above you never even heard the engine in the video as I never got much over 1/4 throttle... But keep in mind that was on concrete. The car looks very similar to that at an autox with full throttle, but also keep in mind its built to drift at a whim as thats how I like to drive. The video above is of the car with about 300hp and 380lbs of torque.

I dont think over 300lbs of torque is really advisable, the real fun here is horsepower with a nice torque curve that lets you get on the gas predictably.

I think that this chassis really benefits from a large displacement v6 or a medium displacement 4 cylinder turbo that revs high (think 7.5k) and has enough torque to pull strong from 2500+. Examples being a porsche 3.6 or a modern 1.8-2L medium sized turbo.