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

[gothspeed]

I usually think about it in power to weight and how that weight is distributed on the chassis. There are certainly big hp motors out there but in the case of V8s i think they carry too much weight for the chassis. IMO the weight of a four with the hp of a six (125-200 hp) is an ideal combination.

About 1 hp per 15 pounds of total weight is on the mild side, 1 hp per 10 pounds of total car weight is very nice for a street car and the closer to 1 hp per 5 pounds you get, the closer you are to a track / race car.