How Much Horsepower is Too Much Horsepower?

Anyone who has ever had an infatuation with power created by combustion engines will tell you, “you can never make enough horsepower”. But in this day-and-age where smaller engines and better technology takes us to astronomical performance levels, it seems like that thought process may not be so true anymore.


Normal-sized LS motors that already take in mass amounts of air and fuel by design leave the car enthusiast with all kinds of options to upgrade other non-horsepower performance parts on their vehicle to perform better. A tubbed-out, roll cage-fitted vehicle with a massive supercharger sticking out of the hood may look fierce, but you might be surprised to watch a vehicle appearing to be mostly stock smoke the crap out of the wannabe race car.


When building a badass vehicle it should be more about taking the horsepower you plan on creating and making sure you can successfully get it to the wheels and then to the payment.

500 Horsepower Before 1990

Sure, 500-hp has been possible since guys started taking apart engines and putting them back together with the whole intent to go faster. But before the '90s, 500-hp in a daily cruiser in a 1980s Corvette, Camaro, Mustang, etc. just wasn't realistic. 

Not to say that 500-hp in a daily driver before 1990 has never happened, but for the most part, that kind of horsepower was reserved for track use, short drives to the car show, or for trailer queens. Driving back and forth to work every day or taking long drives would have been pretty unusual for 500+ horsepower vehicles in the late '80s, '70s, '60s, etc.

The New Age: Right Off The Showroom Floor Vehicles Are Plenty Fast With Plenty Of Horsepower 

Finding a sports car from this generation with over 300 hp is as easy as going to your local dealership. No upgrades are needed, today's sports cars and muscle cars will leave any stock or upgraded '80s sports car trailing far behind. 

The new Corvettes, Camaros, Hellcats, Chargers, and Mustangs that we see today can easily make big horsepower and awesome 1/4-mile times. Even Cadillac and many other unexpected auto divisions have poured more horsepower into their vehicles than one could have ever imagined in the mid-'80s and early '90s. 

If you would have told me back in the '90s that there would be a six-cylinder Camaro in the 21 first century that would keep up with a '90s LT-1 Camaro and leave an '80s Z28 in its dust, I would have told you that you were crazy.

Well, maybe not. 

My Dad was a Pro-Buick guy, so I attended many Buick events watching my Dad race as I was growing up. The early '90s is when we started to notice V6 Buick turbos pulling the wheels off the ground and turning in 10-second timeslips - that's when we knew technology was going to start to change. But we never even bother to argue the point with the Ford Mustang Fox-Body lovers, they wanted to hear nothing of the sort. Ha. Ha.

How Much Horsepower Is Too Much

It really all depends on what your ambitions are. Let's face it, if you want to go fast on a race track, you can make more power than a top fuel dragster, but that does not mean you're going to dominate anything. 

If you're doing it just for show, I think that's kind of silly, but to each his own. Sure, it's great to sit at the car show or the drag strip and say, “yep, my baby puts out 2,200 ponies”. 

But when a brand new sports car pulls up next to you at the light –quiet and stock looking – and he takes off on you like a rocketship, and your loud, monster setup is gasping for mass amounts of air while standing still trying to find just a little bit of traction just seems kind of embarrassing.

How Much Horsepower Is Just Enough

It all depends on what you are planning on doing with your vehicle. The perfect amount of horsepower to me would be being able to use and have fun with every bit of horsepower that I paid for. Sure, have there been times when I have wanted more horsepower for some of my vehicles? Absolutely, but I also like to eat as well. 

Having an extra boatload of horsepower under my hood that I'll never use doesn't really seem worth it if my bank account is at zero. And on top of everything else, at one point or another, you're going to get curious and try to find out what your vehicle can do. If you find out that the car, you, or both can't handle it, you might find yourself with a vehicle that is wrapped around a tree. 

General Motors' Company Store Opened in GM Renaissance Center

The Renaissance Center 

Downtown Detroit on the river front of the Detroit River sets the skyline icon of the GM Renaissance Center. Headquarters to the General Motor Corporation, the 5.5 million square foot facility will play host to a new official General Motors Company store. 

Located on Level 1 in the GM Wintergarden, the GM store is part of an ongoing renovation to the tower to make public spaces more visitor friendly. The store will bring an exciting atmosphere that will use interactive exhibits to display some of GM's newest innovations, technology, and designs. The GM global brand will be promoted with novelties for purchase like branded coffee mugs, golf balls, hats, sweaters, polo shirts, model cars and much more. For more merchandise details head to www.gmcompanystore.com.

 

The new General Motors store first opened its doors on Nov. 7, 2016 with hours between 9:30 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. during the week and will be open on some weekends as its popularity progresses. All GM employs will enjoy a 10 percent discount with proper GM ID. 

The seven tower Renaissance Center sees an estimated 17,000 people per day and is home to great eateries like Joe Muer Seafood and Granite City Food & Brewery. Among the restaurants, the Renaissance Center also offers meeting and conference rooms, shopping experiences, other than the GM store, and even lodging, which includes a 70-story Detroit Marriott Hotel.  

6.6-Liter Durmax Diesel Torque Monster

Like the horsepower wars that "The Big Three" are involved in with their cars, the war to build a heavy-duty truck that can push the limits and take the crown for the biggest and best torque ratings are very much alive as well. 

For 2017, GM decides it's time to refresh and toughen up their 6.6-liter Durmax diesel engines for their Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra HD trucks. The extra boost in power will provide the already stout HD trucks with 455-hp, up from last year's 397-hp. And the new torque ratings for the Durmax will be boosted up to 910-lb.-ft. of torque, a bump from the 765-lb.-ft. of torque from the previous year.

90% of this new found torque can be available at a very low 1,550-rpm, helping you take off from a dead stop very effortlessly even when towing an extraordinary amount of weight.  

• The refreshed Durmax gets its power from a mound of new and beefed up engine components:
• Turbocharger 
• Cylinder Heads
• Pistons
• Connecting Rods
• Crankshaft
• Venturi Jet Drain Oil Separator

The Venturi Jet Drain Oil Separator uses boost from the turbocharger to suck more oil back into the sump, ensuring the oil doesn’t get in places it’s not supposed to go. GM also strengthens up their notorious Allison six-speed transmission to help deal with the new torque numbers, making the Durmax HD trucks more powerful and durable than ever. 

Along with all of the beefed up new components, the Durmax will also be able to run on B20 fuel, which is a mix of 20% Biodiesel and 80% conventional diesel fuel. 

So how does the 2017 Durmax setup match-up with the other competitors? The Ford Super Duty 6.7-liter Powerstroke diesel puts out 440-hp, but the Ford still takes the torque crown for 2017 with 925-lb.-ft. of torque. The Ram HD sports an inline six-cylinder diesel that puts out 385-hp with a very stout 900-lb.-ft. of torque, not bad for a six-cylinder. 

Since it doesn't seem like the competitiveness for big torque numbers is going to go away anytime soon, one would have to suspect that the possibility of seeing these HD trucks coming in at 1,000-lb.-ft. of torque+ very soon, is very real.    

Rarest Corvettes In The World For A Fraction Of The Price

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2017 Chevrolet SS: Lack of Advertising - Lack of Sales?

In my opinion, one of the coolest four-door sedans that Chevrolet has produced since the Chevy Impalas of the mid-'90s is the 2014-'15-'16 Chevrolet SS sedan. Unfortunately, from what it sounds like, Chevrolet is going to make 2017 the last year for the four-door sedan that packs a punch of 415 horsepower courtesy of an LS3 motor.

The cool thing is that for, what sounds like will be the last year, there could be a supercharged LSA engine shoved in the engine bay that will put out 500+ horsepower. For a four-door sedan that can put down a 13 second flat quarter-mile time before the supercharged upgrade, if the rumors are true, the sports sedan will truly be a fun vehicle to drive. And with even more rumors of the sedan possibly getting a 1LE Camaro suspension, competing with cars like BMW and other European sports sedans will surely be no problem.

But why the reason for discontinuing a good thing [Chevrolet SS]?

No one knows for sure why Chevrolet is planning on discontinuing the SS yet [if they do], but for anyone hoping they don't, the news sounds very grim. Sales for the SS are down and GM already makes pretty good sales with another four-door sedan that emulates the same type of power and performance with a higher profile name, the Cadillac CTS-V.

Some people may wonder why sales are down on the powerful, good-looking, well-priced sedan. I think one of the reasons could be the lack of advertising for the vehicle.

No one can really know if that is the way Chevrolet wanted it, or if they only planned to make the car for X amount of years. Let's face it, even the slick-looking mid-'90s Chevy Impala that everyone loved only stuck around for 3 years. 

If this was an attempt to make the SS sedan a rare car somewhere down the line, in say maybe a decade or two because of a limited number of sales, then Chevy has done a good job of doing that. In fact, for most people, if they see a new SS on the road, it would probably roll right past them without them even knowing what it really is. Hell, if I wasn't a car guy, and even for the car enthusiast who may not have much interest in GM vehicles, the Chevrolet SS could easily be mistaken for just another average grocery-getting sedan. 

For whatever reason, the SS truly hides in plain sight and advertising and promotions of the very cool car are literally just about non-existent. And that could very well be the reason for the low sales of the Chevy SS sedan. Not only that, but if the rumors are true and Chevy decides to put the LSA supercharged engine in the SS but makes no changes in their promotional strategy, chances are the 2017 Chevrolet SS will not be a big seller either, and that will probably force GM to abandon production of the car, maybe something they wanted in the first place.

The New Chevy Silverado HD Hood Scoop - Cool And Functional

For many years now, ram air hood scoops were put in place to shovel in more air into the intake system causing an increase of performance by horsepower. This new Chevy Silverado HD hood scoop is also designed to create better performance, but not by forcing more air into the intake system, instead, the hood scoop will help create a cooler engine compartment for the engine which can also help create better performance.

These trucks are designed for towing/hauling, four-wheel driving activities, long drives, withstanding major mileage while still performing well. Whenever an engine can run cooler it will always perform better. So when an engine is under constant stress, like these Chevy Silverado HD trucks spend a lot of their time under, it makes sense to want to keep that engine as cool as possible for all of the time that it is performing any type of activities.

So just how much does this ram air hood scoop actually help? 

The ram air scoop will take in 60 percent of all of the cool air that will enter the engine compartment. The other 40 percent of air will come through the space behind the front bumper which is designed to take on the engine compartment air funneling responsibilities even if the ram air scoop gets blocked up.

The ram air design features a 90-degree angle which is capable of catching large droplets of water (rain) and small debris keeping out as much moisture and crap as it can to ensure that as much clean and cool air gets into the engine compartment as possible.

All and all, the scoop not only looks pretty cool, but it is more functional than a lot of ram air hoods we have seen in the past. Let's face it, some ram air hoods we have seen though the years hardly created noticeable extra horsepower and some of which we've seen weren't even functional.

I have yet to hear any official statement if GMC will have the same ram air scoop on their HD trucks, but one would imagine they will follow suit.

2017 Bumblebee Transformer Camaro

After many stories about the 2017 Bumblebee Transformer Camaro, here comes the real news. My friend from GM says that all Camaros in the movie will be an assortments of different trims. Whatever GM will sell them and let them destroy will be the Camaro you see.

Still going to be cool.