When is there too much power under the hood? I used to think that I'd never have too much power in my car. These days I'm not so sure that "enough" has been reach, or is it like Rolls-Royce used to specify their engine power: sufficient. The question of how much power do you really need has never been answered. But these days, we're seeing more and more power in the supercars with 1000 horsepower coming very soon. Golly, I used to think that 200 was a lot.
Not long ago I drove a Chrysler-modified Dodge Viper with 650 horsepower. That was the first car I've ever driven that I thought had too much power to drive on the street. Yes, the Viper is really an unrefined car without traction control or stability control. Certainly that influenced my feeling.
Mercedes has just announced CL and SL models with a turbocharged V-12 from the Maybach with 604 horsepower. Is that getting to the point of too much? At least these cars have traction control to put some limit on how much trouble the driver can get into. But in America, do we have drivers who know how to drive a car with this much power?
Is it a coincidence that the Viper and these Mercedes models are both built by the same company?
Yes, the Mercedes are very expensive and likely to be built in very small numbers. That means that stupid young kids are unlikely to be driving them. Right. That is true until the first time the kid asks dad if he can drive his new Mercedes. Here comes the terror of Beverly Hills!
In the late sixties and seventies we had a situation like this. There were ever more powerful Chevrolets, Fords, and Plymouths to appeal to the new generation of car enthusiasts with money. The quest for power spread to the new ponycars when they came online and we had really powerful Mustangs, Camaros, and Barracudas. The more upscale marques felt the need to be at least equal to their lesser brothers, so there were big-engined Mercurys, Pontiacs, Buicks, Oldsmobiles, and Dodges. This definitely was an American thing as the Japanese had yet to take hold here and the Europeans weren't really interested.
These cars definitely were designed to go very fast in a straight line and not be too concerned about going around corners or stopping. Note that they were the less-expensive marques so their prices weren't that high, appealing to younger, less experienced drivers. Three things happened to stop this trend.
The first was emissions rules that started in 1969. The manufacturers didn't have the technology to cope with them, causing horsepower to fall, even with big engines.
The big engines started to disappear when the first gas crisis struck in 1973. Suddenly fuel economy was important. That meant that big engines were undesirable, regardless of how much power they developed.
If that wasn't enough, the insurance companies decided that all that horsepower was dangerous. If you had a car with lots of power, you were going to pay very high insurance premiums. That makes sense, doesn't it? That there was no real statistical information to support this wasn't important. It seemed logical. This struck the young enthusiast who couldn't really afford huge insurance premiums.
Therefore big power died out, and probably could be pronounced dead by 1980.
Fast forward to about 1995 when we see manufacturers worldwide slowly increasing the power with little effect on fuel economy. The insurance companies haven't noticed it yet either.
Today most of the cars with 500 plus horsepower are really expensive, thus the people who buy them can afford the high insurance premiums. They probably have high premiums because the car is expensive rather than just because they have lots of power.
But... those high horsepower figures are migrating downward in the market.
Today there is a Chevrolet Corvette with 450 horsepower for $53,000 (with rebates, probably much cheaper).
Or how about a Subaru WRX STi with 300 horsepower for $31,000?
Even further down in price is the Dodge Neon SRT-4 with 230 horsepower and only $21,000; and that's easily modifiable to higher power after purchase.
These cars are likely to be purchased by enthusiasts who are more likely to know what to do with all that power, but what about the common refrigerator, the Toyota Camry with 225 horsepower available. That's power inflation. Are the typical buyers of a V-6 Camry with that kind of power ready for that?
I haven't mentioned a big lumbering Cadillac Escalade at 5600 pounds (unloaded) with 345 horsepower or a slightly less lumbering Porsche Cayenne at 5200 pounds with 450 horsepower. Want to stop these, particularly if they really have off-road tires on them?
I predict that this power inflation will attract the attention of lawmakers. It already has begun in Germany. And if not lawmakers, it will attract insurance companies that sense they can make even more profit by charging high-powered car owners higher premiums. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety can concoct some statistics that will be reported by the news media as fact and use that to justify higher prices.
So the cycle of high-powered cars is about to end. I wonder if that will start the cycle again. It was about 25 years before, so will we see high-powered cars again in 25 years? Or will the industry somehow escape this time? Either way, I'd say the time to buy is now if you want one.
