Is There Such a Thing as Too Much Horsepower?

It has taken about a week or so, but there's another one of those wacky outside-the-box auto memes bubbling up through the blogosphere: Alexis Madrigal, a staff writer at Wired.com, ran some numbers on the power-generating capacity of the U.S. automotive fleet in a story at GreenTechHistory.com. Unsurprisingly, at least to me, the results showed that the current pool of autos in circulation can put out about 35 times more horsepower than all this country's power plants put together.

To put this into some kind of perspective, Madrigal points out that, in 1937, the U.S. vehicle fleet was "only" developing 15 times more horsepower than the power plants, meaning the difference between the two has grown by some 43 percent in the past 72 years.

And even this stat doesn't exactly do justice to the increase in horsepower U.S. autos have seen. In 1937, the Chevrolet Master and Master Deluxe, all new for the model year, holstered 85-hp V-8's. Today's Chevy Malibu uses half the cylinders to develop almost exactly twice the horsepower (169 hp). Coincidentally, standard 1937 Ford pickups also developed 85 hp, although an optional 60-hp V-8 was available. Today's F-150 starts with a 294-hp engine. A Jaguar SS100 from 1937, perhaps the epitome of the pre-war British sports car, reached an even 100 horsepower. The current XK runs out a 385-hp V-8 in the base model and ratchets that up to 510 hp in the XKR.

In fact, Madrigal quotes a report from the Institute of Transportation Studies to claim the average new car today packs 247 hp, and, considering the insane power available from vehicles like the Bugatti Veyron (1001 hp), Lamborghini Murcielago (670 hp) or Corvette ZR1 (638 hp), I'm surprised at how low that number is. On the other hand, the same study shows an average rating of 110 hp for cars in 1980—a few more horses than found in a 2010 Chevrolet Aveo but 12 less than a Nissan Versa.

The main point of Madrigal's story is that maybe enough is too much, horsepower-wise, and I can buy into that belief. OEMs don't seem to realize this, but they're never going to get 0-60 times down to zero — at least not until someone perfects the flux capacitor.

So it's nice to read a few manufacturers are at least exploring things on the other end of the spectrum. Motor Trend is quoting "one source" as saying Ford is working on a 1.4-liter EcoBoost engine, which just might address an earlier request of mine for a four-cylinder engine with the power of a four-cylinder engine and the fuel economy of something smaller, instead of a four with the power of a six and the fuel-efficiency of a four. After all, an engine this size would actually be tinier than the current one in the Honda Fit.

And BMW is supposed to be working on three-cylinder engines for upcoming entry-level models from its 1-Series and 3 Series — and, although I'm guessing here, perhaps the MINI. This is big news, because even though the three is not uncommon in city cars outside the U.S., the only vehicle currently being pushed by a trio of cylinders in this country is the Smart ForTwo. Offering the smaller engine in more "serious" cars would be a big boost to its acceptance among customers.

Now, by the end of his article, Madrigal does veer off into the kind of analysis that makes industry experts cringe, and I'm not even talking about his suggestion that the "Tata Nano, with its 33 horsepower engine, is the way to go." It's more his tone, which seems to imply U.S. customers would voluntarily buy cars like the Nano if only more OEMs built them. As for the chances of that happening, well, I again refer to the flux capacitor.