My current car is a 97 Honda Civic, bottom of the engine range, an 84bhp 4 cylinder lump under the bonnet. It can happily keep up with traffic in town, on the main roads and can (noisily) keep up with motorway speeds which equates to 70mph here in the UK. Aside from this, I’ve driven my Dad’s two Volvos which had the two smallest petrol engines available (2.3l and 2.0l) which made them sluggish to say the least and his turbo diesel Saab which is what I would consider above adequate, easily cruising at motorway speeds and thrashing hot hatches at the lights.
But none of this is what I would conside overpowered. A car that will happily spin its wheels in any gear, will travel at a 100mph without the revs through the bonnet of the car, can get to 60mph in under 8 seconds, any or all of these make a car overpowered (IMHO ) Has anyone indulged themselves so with such a car?
Mom used to have a Cadillac Seville - that would go 115 with no problem. Sadly, I have the speeding tickets to prove it.
Also, through some sort of cookie promotion I wound up renting a Mustang once. That thing went like snot - you could actually feel the engine urging you to go faster.
I have a Mazda RX-8. Supposedly it can reach 142mph… the fastest I’ve gone in it is about 110 (not on the public road), so yeah it’s pretty overpowered. Let’s face it though, 90% of cars on the road are overpowered.
What’s most fun is that the redline is stupidly high. You can reach nearly 40mph in first gear, 60-odd in second and I’ve got it to 88mph in third. The engine just keeps on pulling until you hit the rev limiter (in fact I’ve heard that it would happily rev up to about 13,000rpm, but they cap it at around 9000 to be on the safe side). Got to love that rotary engine.
Sadly I’m going to have to get rid of it soon - it drinks petrol at an alrming rate, even when driven sensibly.
I once had to dive a mate to the ER after an accident. He had a Sierra Cosworth.
I’m not going to say how fast we went but it scared the crap out of me.
Your last two criteria I would call the dividing line between adequate and underpowered.
I completely agree with the first part - the only car I’ve ever driven that felt truly overpowered (for street driving) was a Dodge Viper. That one required a light touch on the throttle.
It’s a diesel and I have it chipped for more performance. I regularly surprise people by being able to merge ahead of them getting on the highway (but I have to be careful not to spin the tires while I’m doing so.)
I used to own a hot rod gas-powered truck too (a '93 Ford Lightning) and while that was cool, I’m finding that my even bigger diesel is even better, although not so much with the handling. And it gets better mileage while doing so.
I think every American is going to answer in the affirmative here. My first car was my grandfather’s Dodge Coronet with a 318 slant. That was followed by an Olds Delta 88, in which I received my first speeding ticket, for 108/55. My wife at the time had a Cutlass Supreme 2-door with a V-8 that could do that in L2. We also had an 85 Cutlass Calais Pace Car model, although it did eventually throw a rod.
What is an “overpowered car”? I understand the words, but the phrase just does not compute!
(And as the current and past owner of a string of practical, boring, 4-cyl cars, I would answer “no”. And with gas prices as they are I doubt my dream of a white 65 Caddy convertible will ever be.)
Most people don’t think of cadillacs as fast cars, but I’m the third person to chime in here who has gotten a ticket in one. I’ve also gotten a ticket in an olds delta 88. Those big old v8’s had a lot of power, even if you did put them in a big old heavy car.
I used to own an old chevy monte carlo with a 350 V8. It was an old beater car that wasn’t even a uniform color from one side to the other any more. My wife used to call it my Uncle Buck car. If you’ve ever seen the movie, you know what she meant. It may have been ugly as all hell, but it was fast.
The fastest car I owned was a 1969 dodge charger with a 440 V8. This was another beater car with a lot of fiberglass up front where metal fenders used to be. According to the previous owner, the front wheels would start lifting off of the ground at 160 mph which made control a little difficult (and hence the large amount of fiberglass and bondo on the front of the car). I bought the car when I was a young stupid teenager for $400 and sold it less than a year later for $800, which was probably a good thing. If I had kept it much longer it probably would have killed me.
The monte carlo got 12 mpg and the charger got 8 mpg.
Yup, had a 1973 Buick Riviera, 455 cid back in college. The speedometer went to I believe 145 mph. I took it past that, beyond the gap and buried the needle in the dash housing. It wouls moke tires from a standstill and keep smoking them in 2nd. The car was without a doubt a beast. Made you look like a pimp, but a beast nevertheless.
Does my 73 AMX count? rebuilt 401 (411 cubes, 450HP), it did the 1/4 mile in 14 secs at 104 miles per hour. Never got a good launch because the tires would spin in first gear pretty much at will. I suspect it could do 0-60 in about 6 seconds. Scroll to the bottom for the car pics.
Way overpowered, but I liked it that way.
I also had a 72 Chevelle with 402 (big block) in it. Nice torque.
0-60 in somewhere just above four seconds, quarter mile in 12.9 (at 6000’), top speed at current power level somewhere north of 180 (no speed limiter).
So, do I drive the fastest car currently on the Dope? I dunno. Among my friends, I have the slow car.
) Has anyone indulged themselves so with such a car?
