Around 2002, I got my first job out of college, which mostly consisted of researching the statistics on (street legal) race cars and entering them into a database. At that time, the Corvette Z06 had somewhat famously come out with a monstrous 400 BHP – one of the highest horse power cars I remember noting down. The modern Corvette ZR1 gets 638 BHP. Through the US and Europe, topping 600 seems to be the average for the high end vehicles. That’s over a 150% increase in 8 years. If you were to presume that rate of increase going back in time, it would look like:
But if we look through history, a BMW M5 in 1985 was getting 286 BHP, a 1969 Chevy Corvette ZL1 supposedly got 425 BHP and a 1972 Mercedes Benz 6.9 had 286 BHP. Overall, at least between 1970 and 2002, 400 BHP seems to have been the general cap on horse power. What’s happened since then to make it shoot up all of a sudden? Is it still going to climb higher?
I would guess that active suspension systems are what made the real difference lately. Before active suspensions, if you put a 600 hp engine in a car it was pretty much guaranteed that you were going to lose control and crash it at some point. Having an active suspension means that for the same level of driving skill, you can put more hp into the car without it being very likely to kill the driver.
Computer designed aerodynamics probably make a big difference too. Airflow that would have taken a cray supercomputer to model in the 80’s can now be done on a desktop PC. If the car tends to naturally stick to the ground and not fly out of control, you don’t have to be a professional race car driver to drive it.
Active suspensions have been around for a very long time, but they only got good at it (at least with respect to muscle type cars) in the mid 90s or so. At least that’s the impression I have. I may be wrong.
Computer design was around before 2000 too, but computer power has been increasing and design packages have been getting more and more sophisticated (and less expensive).
Have there been any legal restrictions on cars that changed around 2000?
I would guess the reason actually has to do with the emissions and economy regulations that were first imposed in the 1970’s, and technology playing catch-up. For example, the Corvette’s power output peaked in the early 70’s at around 425 hp, but by the early 80’s that had fallen to somewhere around 185 hp. But starting in the 80’s, technologies such as electronic fuel injection, dual overhead cams, variable timing, and such, improved efficiency to the point that engineers were able to claw back the power lost while still complying with regulations.
Just a guess but could electronic traction control have something to do with it?
Not much sense in having 600 horses if all you’re gonna do is smoke away all that nice soft (expensive) rubber.
Computers controls on the engines along with technologies that were developed that lends themsleves to this control, such as ignition, fuel injection, and timing systems. I believe that these systems were originally put in place to meet emission regulations, but once you get better control over the entire process you can use the same technologies to fine tune the engine for any purpose - emissions, power, fuel economy, etc.
Keep in mind also that in the 60s and 70s, horsepower ratings and measuers were held to nothing near the standard they are today. I have seen websites which re-rated some of those supposed 400+ HP engines from the 60s and 70s at more like 250 - 275 HP. They just had monstrous amounts of torque, and would measure horsepower at the crank instead of with all the accessories, etc.
The same thing has been happening across the board with every kind of car. Like for example the Honda Accord has picked up 55 HP on the 4-cylinder and 73 on V6 in the last 10 years, which are both percentage-wise close to the increase on the 'vette. The reason is that car makers have gotten better at making more efficient engines, but instead of selling more fuel efficient cars they’re (for the most part) selling cars that get about the same gas mileage but have more power.
The cars you’re talking about are certainly high end, but they’re not supercars. They’re relatively high-volume production cars and as such they still have to be reasonably efficient cars, both for regulatory reasons and because their customers do still use them as daily drivers. It’s not like a Lamborghini or something where you can have a car that gets single digit MPG’s and just work whatever fines are associated with that into the sale price.
In my humble opinion the single most advancement in volumetric efficiency (torque and horsepower vs. displacement) is the now-common use of superchargers and turbochargers. In the not too distant past, and with very few exceptions, their usage was limited to race cars.
Look at the new Ford Taurus SHO, for example. I don’t know its displacement, but its V6 engine is pumping out 365 HP (+/-). I believe it’s got a twin turbo set up. Back in the 60’s every hotrodders dream was 1 HP per cubic inch. Way, way past that now.
I’d agree that I wouldn’t trust that the 1970 cars were truly getting 400 BHP. But unless you’re arguing that they were actually getting 79 BHP, the point remains that HP has shot up at an extraordinary rate in this last decade.
You’re only frame of reference is between the Z06 and the ZR1? You know there’s also a C6 Z06 right? That one has 505hp from a 7l NA engine. To go to the ZR1 means going to a force induction engine, so if you’re trying to say that force induction sure bumps up the horsepower, OK, but I don’t know why you should take that as a trend to extrapolate back 40 years.
Don’t know that much about engines, but my impression is that fuel injection and computer-timed electronic ignition have made the engines MUCH more efficient with the fuel they have. I wonder too if better materials and construction have made it possible to redline higher? I know the difference betwen my carbureted Civic and a fuel-injected model 5 years later was night and day.
Old engines used to emit a significant amount of their fuel unburned. Spark timing was “good enough” over a certain range of engine RPM based on strictly mechanical construction. Spark advance in one motorcycle I recall was accomplished by centrifugal force causing the spark gap mechanism to change the advance angle. Now computers read everything -engine speed, temperature, accelerator pedal etc.- and inject just the right amount of fuel and fire it at precisely the right time, using the full power of that fuel. Fancier engines now even alter the timing of their valve trains with RPM to get better results. I saw one ROM upgrade for BMW engines that promised better performance than stock, but required you to use ONLY premium gas.
The '69 Corvette had a number of engine options. If you wanted 400 horsepower, you had to get the 427-cubic-inch (7-liter) engine, which is pretty big.
On the latest 'Vette, a 364CI (6.2L ) engine provides as much as 436 horsepower. This is while burning a stoichiometric mixture and putting out very little pollution while getting pretty good fuel economy; the same cannot be said for the old Stingray.
Emissions and fuel economy regulations killed power output in the '70’s and early '80’s, but as technology improved, the power output has crept back up. Part of the improvement is increased efficiency, part of it is better breathing (e.g. four valves per cylinder) that enables the engine to cram more mixture into the cylinders before the intake valves close, and part of it is an improvement in materials/engineering that permits higher redline (power output is the product of torque and RPM).
I’m going to disagree here. It was nothing for a late 60’s big block anything to have that kind of hp. These were 13 second cars out the door and they were HEAVY.
You have to look at the torque figures. A 275hp car can easily corss the finish line in 13 seconds if it has 500 ft-lbs of torque. I’m not saying ALL the high HP numbers were fudged, but a pretty high percentage of them were.
I think the Corvette ZR-1 is a supercar. It may not have the panache, fit and finish, ultra luxurious interior details and such, but its recorded times around various tracks (like the record Nurenburg lap) as well as its stated performance figures (0-60 in 2.9 sec, 1/4 mile in 11.8 sec, 205+mph top speed) are on par or even better than many cars that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars more.
For a “mere” $100,000 or so its a relative bargain in that category of car for the incredible performance you get. And its not all engine either. The car has the brakes off a Ferrari Enzo and can handle the skidpad at over 1g.
While horsepower numbers have generally been going up, there are a number of 300+ and 400+ horsepower cars from the 60’s.
Also, I don’t agree with the active suspension comment at all. Many of the high horsepower supercars do not have such a feature, same with traction control.
It certainly helps, but it’s lack has never been a “barrier” as some seem to be implying.
Minor nitpick: the Corvette’s LS engine (used in the more common models) is still pushrod and didn’t get variable valve timing until 2005. It’s also still only a two-valve design. The vaunted ZR-1 used a double overhead cam engine, but that was dropped with the sixth generation design; the new ZR1 uses a turbo-charged derivative of the base engine.