When Will The Horsepower Wars End?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Title says it all. Inspired by the “46 MPG in 1977”? thread as well as the “1960’s early 1970’s Musclecars versus modern musclecars” thread within it, I can’t help but wonder.

Gas is becoming increasingly expensive. Americans are going to be forced to knuckle down and pay something closer to what the rest of the world pays for gas eventually, even though we’ve realistically been underpaying for gas for decades compared to the rest of the world due to our own production and the Wal-Mart bulk discount.

Now, everyone knows that there are differences in terms of what other countries in say, Europe, pay, versus America for gasoline, but Europe doesn’t drive everywhere all the time like America does and the US doesn’t have (for whatever reason, size, lack of political impetus) the public transportation system to offset it either.

In light of all this…I love ridiculously fast cars, and I own a modestly fast Mustang GT. It gets 15 city and 21 highway and generates just over 300 horsepower. Not shabby, not insane…but where does it end?

When will we see the end of the musclecar? Can it be that far off, with gas prices rising as they are? My car sucks gas like crazy. Ford is just introducing the new Shelby 500 Gt Mustang for 2013 that has 650 horsepower! The Corvette ZR-1 that came out a few years ago has 648 horsepower! Granted, these are limited production cars, but the new 2011 5.0 liter Mustangs are cranking out 412 hp on regular pump gas!

What I am wondering is when America falls into line with the rest of the world and most commuters (and granted, we are a driving country that drives more miles than any other country due to how we’re set up) adopt the higher MPG vehicles with a huge dropoff in horsepower.

I suppose what I am saying/asking, is how far off is that? This is the “golden age” of powerful American cars, with Chevy, Ford and others introducing unheard of horsepower figures at (compared to foreign counterparts) ridiculously low prices.

But gas isn’t getting any cheaper. I love fast ridiculous cars…but when do we hit the wall? With prophecies of peak oil and such, instability in the Middle East driving prices up 30 cents or more a gallon every day…where is the threshold?

Will the musclecar die soon? Or will it reinvent itself?

/long winded overly-complicated simple question

2

it’ll end when fuel actually becomes expensive.

3

I see no reason to believe it will end. A lot of the muscle cars you mentioned are niche products, niche markets aren’t the same as the market at large. Someone who is going to spend $50,000 on a sports car with 600 + hp probably is someone who could easily fill up on $8/gal gas and not worry about it.

I don’t follow American muscle cars at all (I basically am opposed to buying American cars these days and despise all the American brands), but I know people who own some previous limited edition Mustangs or Camaros (cars that are normally not really all that expensive) that retailed for $50k+ because they were “limited edition” with < 1,000 being made or something.

Almost everyone I know who owns a car like that keeps it covered, in a garage, 80% of the year. They only bring it out for special occasions. If you’re putting 4-5,000 miles tops in a car in a year I don’t know that the price of gas is all that big of a concern.

Finally, you misunderstand the economics of the gasoline market. There is not really a “Wal-Mart bulk discount” effect when it comes to American gasoline prices at the pump. While certain regional differences (mostly related to refinery capacity and such) can cause small regional variations at the pump, the reason Europe pays so much more at the pump than we do is because of European gas taxes. So there is not actually any point in the future where normal market fluctuations could ever have our price at the pump be the same as Europe’s, as long as Europe has substantially higher gas taxes than we do their price at the pump will always be higher–no matter the price of crude.

Crude oil and even gasoline are mostly fungible commodities, and the Europeans aren’t paying more for the raw materials than we are by and large, they’re just paying more to their governments.

4

The horsepower war will end when we stop regularly driving/piloting our own vehicles and switch to something more automated that might travel slower but still get us to our destinations faster, cheaper, and more safely.

Even when electric cars take over, horsepower will still be a factor. Only once we lose full control of our vehicles, will that go away, IMO.

5

The truth is, it doesn’t cost Detroit much more to make a big car/SUV/muscle car than it does to make a fuel efficient compact, but Americans are willing to pay more for big and fast than we are for small and economical. Until we decide that fuel economy is an option that we’re willing to pay for, just like horsepower, don’t look for the auto industry to change its ways.

6

I hope it never ends, at least im my lifetime. The performance cars you mention certainly do have relatively low MPG ratings as compared to a Prius. Some might even say they are socially irresponsible. However, as a percentage of the cars on the road, their numbers are miniscule. Ergo, their impact on national fuel consumption is also minimal. BTW, my understanding is that the 650 HP Shelby Mustang isn’t saddled with the Gas Guzzler penalty. Impressive, to be sure.

Today’s performance cars are great. In recent years I’ve owned a '98 WS6 Firebird, an '04 GTO and now a '10 6 spd Challenger. Love 'em all. Horsepower is like guns…you’ll always have more than you need, but less than you want.

7

I’ve got a new subcompact that gets around 37 mpg, and gas costs me about $100/month with a modestly above-average commute. If I instead drove a ridiculously overpowered muscle car, my fuel costs wouldn’t even double. I could easily find an additional $100/month in my budget to fuel up a gas guzzler. Hell, if I really wanted to I could also find a few hundred extra per month for the increased insurance and car payments on something like a Mustang GT (even as a broke-ass grad student!).

Big HP will be popular until fuel costs are truly prohibitive. Even as much as we like to grumble about fuel costs, a gas guzzler doesn’t cost any more than premium cable or going out to eat regularly. So, as a WAG, fuel economy won’t be a major concern for everyone until fuel costs double or triple.

8

Never.

Even if CAFE, emissions and safety regulations strangle cars like they did in the 1970s, the manufacturers will find a way to make the cars both fast and desirable. As the thing that largely differentiates one car from another is want, not need, they will feed that want as long as people are there to buy cars. If that means they get 350 horses out of a 1.5 liter turbodiesel and still get 40 miles to the gallon they’ll find a way to do it if it can be done.

9

I’m glad you felt we needed to know this.

10

Well, it does not necessarily needs to be a fossil fuel one, this **electrical **dragster can do 400 horsepower w/ 1250 ft. lbs. torque now.

The torque BTW is what allows them to leave even higher HP gas guzzlers in the dust:

http://www.plasmaboyracing.com/whitezombie.php

11

Europe has cars with a lot of horsepower, too. Watch any episode of Top Gear, you’ll see 500+ horsepower cars, available in Europe. Granted, not many people can afford those cars, but a Mustang isn’t exactly a common car here, either.

13

Car makers are getting more and more horsepower out of smaller engines. I’m not sure how
much better gas mileage these smaller, more powerful engines get but I think there is some
improvement. So hopefully they can still make powerful engines if this is the case.

14

yes, and how many runs can they do before the battery is depleted, and how long does it take to recharge the battery?

Look, the problem with electric cars isn’t the motor. Electric motors are just fine for moving vehicles around. It’s that whole “energy storage” problem. The Tesla Roadster’s 950-lb battery can only store as much energy as 1.5 gallons of gasoline.

That’s the problem with electric cars.

15

My uncle has a country place no one knows about. He says it used to be a farm before the motor law.

16

reported

17

With muscle cars, you eventually hit a point where you have more power than the car or the driver can handle. The electronic controls that are common on very high end cars these days have extended that point, but there’s only so much you can do with those while still giving the driver a sense of control. I think most gearheads would prefer a 500HP car that feels like you’re actually driving it than a 700HP one that does most of the driving for you.

What I’m more interested in is why every car sold in the US from econoboxes to minivans to pickup trucks have gotten progressively faster and faster while mileage languishes. My pet theory is that the sensible drivers who would be willing to make the MPG for power trade-off mostly buy used cars. Back in the 70’s when a car was worn out in less than 10 years, you could financially justify buying a new car. These days there’s still reasons to buy a new car, but they’re less tangible and anyone who’s thinking purely in terms of cost/benefit is going to end up buying used. For people who do buy new, the difference in fuel costs between, say, a 30MPG and 40MPG car pale in comparison to the cost of the privilege of driving it off the lot. They’re already paying a huge premium to get exactly the car they want and so having to pay a tad more at the pump for more power is a natural extension of this.

I would agree that higher fuel costs could change this situation a little, but I think they would have to be even higher than current European fuel prices to really grab the attention of new car buyers, or to make new economy cars competitive versus used. I’ve always thought that if CAFE didn’t have so many loopholes and the standards kept up with technology, it could be quite effective at forcing carmakers to essentially subsidize the sale of high mileage cars. That’s more or less what kept the economy car alive during the $1 a gallon days of the 90’s, since carmakers had to push Metros and Focuses out the door at rock bottom prices if they wanted to sell Suburbans and Expeditions. What I’d like to see is a sort of cap-and-trade CAFE system where carmakers with truck and performance car heavy lineups could buy dispensations from companies that specialized in small cars or even alternative fuel cars. It still allows people to have big and/or powerful cars if they really want them, but it would also get high mileage cars into the fleet and into the used market.

18

What Mustang do you have? Just curious.

/asks the guy who loves his 2007 Mustang GT. I do a bit better, 17-18 city, 25-27 highway.

19

As others have said, the US auto industry makes plenty of small, fuel-efficient cars, and they’ve made huge strides in quality over the past decade or so. The high-horsepower gas-guzzling muscle cars referred to in the OP make up a very small proportion of their sales. Just look at what Ford is advertising on their homepage these days:

http://www.ford.com/

I don’t know what you mean by “change its ways”, unless you think they should sell exclusively small, efficient cars.

20

How much does a less powerful engine really improve efficiency, for a given car? For example, I have a new Fiesta, which in the US only has the 1.6 L, 120 HP engine. In the UK, the smallest available engine is a 1.25 L, 60 HP engine, which has only slightly better efficiency (about 5% better). It seems to me that in this segment, engineers are squeezing more and more power out of little engines while maintaining or improving efficiency. But compact cars have been gaining weight such that MPG has remained constant.

21

The White Zombie range between charges: