power and more power!

It is obvious that ever since the engine downsizing exercise started all the car companies have been going the force induction route. the slowest of the lot being the Japanese car makers like Toyota and Mazda who still stick to the natural aspirated engine route. The non Japanese however have gone crazy with the turbo charging concept and have been busy bumping horsepower up like there is no tomorrow.

Each class of car now has their own set of monsters. Monsters?! I mean power monsters that are cars with ridiculous amounts of power. The hot hatch cars like the VW Golf and the Ford Focus use to have a mild 200+ horsepower but now the R version of the Golf is pushing close to 300hp and the Ford Focus RS version has well over 300hp and of course we cannot forget the Mercedes AMG45 which pushes out 370hp. While this is all good for the people who want to buy a pocket rocket, the power that these cars push out now is more than a much larger mid size saloon used to push out 15 years ago. The Mercedes E55 AMG from 15 years ago didn't even manage 350hp!

For the mid size saloons, the Mercedes E65 AMG and the BMW M5 push well past 500hp and is in what once was considered super car territory. It wasn't very long ago that the Porsche 911 turbo only had 480hp which is consider very low these days. Even the Ferrari F430 only had 490hp while the BMW M5 of today is pushing 550hp!!

then comes the SUVs, these giants never once broke the 450hp mark and had to lug around well over 2,000kg of weight. Now, the current models can easily break the 500hp mark and AMG even offers a kit for their G class to go into the 600hp territory!!

Super cars with 600hp are no longer interesting, hyper cars are now the hot topic. The magical 1000hp developed by the Veyron is no longer a yard stick. Cars like the Koenigsegg One:1 easily beats that with their 1340hp engine. the hyper cars like the LaFerrari and Mclaren P1 is easily breathing down the necks of the Veyron. Then now come new players NextEV with 1340hp all electric power.

all this power is definitely changing the automotive industry but the question still remains, can the buyers of these cars handle it? When is it considered too much power? Bragging right aside the safety aspect is something to ponder about. the new cars no doubt have traction control and other driving aids but there is also the law of physics. It is often you see in the news that someone crashes their super car because they didn't know to drive it properly or didn't have the skill to drive it properly despite having traction control and driving aids. There is a limit on how much the computer can save the driver.