In 83 Years the Family Sedan Has Gone From 40 to 563 Horsepower
Where else but at the Detroit Auto Show would you hear
such a gratuitous falsehood about the new crop of performance cars?
Upon the release of the Lexus RC F Coupe, which boasts “more than” 450
horsepower, Toyota Chief Engineer Yukihiko Yaguchi said, “There’s a
misconception that race cars are hard to drive. In fact, they’re easy
in the right hands, because they’ve been purpose built for the skill
level of their drivers”. So there you have it, the chief engineer at
Toyota unabashedly admitting that Lexus is selling race cars for the
street.
At
the same auto show General Motors 625 horsepower, Z06 Corvette made its
debut. Last year, Shelby American, based in Las Vegas, Nevada
announced a conversion plan for the production model Ford Mustang Shelby
GT 500. With its stock 662 horsepower not considered sufficient by
Shelby, they offer to raise its vector thrust to 1,100 horsepower. I
could go on, but you get the idea. The horsepower race that started in
the 1930s, with the widespread acceptance of V-8 engines goes on
unabated.
Formula 1 racecars,
which are the fastest driveable vehicles in the world, have a mere 750
horsepower. If such were the case, why would anyone need 1,200
horsepower in a sport coupe that will rarely see a legal speed limit
above seventy miles per hour? The first answer is “look at me” ego
gratification. The second answer is illegal street racing and
demonstrations of power and speed.
I grew up in Southern California and got my first driver’s license in
1964. At that time, the car culture centered on power and speed. By
1970, perhaps epitomizing the muscle car era, the Oldsmobile 442
boasted 365 horsepower. 
Although you could use it to cruise Van Nuys Boulevard, it had two main purposes, legal and illegal drag racing.
Today, you can watch any number of TV shows where
builders will recreate or resurrect old muscle cars for the nostalgia
market. Ironically, even the fastest of the restored muscle cars cannot
hold a candle to the power and maneuverability of a current high-end
production vehicle. For instance, The BMW M6 Coupe weighs almost two
tons, features a twin-turbo V8 that cranks out 560 horsepower and goes
from zero to sixty mph in four seconds flat. Goodbye Oldsmobile 442;
you are left in the dust.
If
you drive in Los Angeles, where a disproportionate number of super cars
find their homes, you know the trouble that they can cause. A quick
trip down almost any LA freeway will expose you to the wrath and fury
of the everyman super car. Whether it is a Dodge Avenger with a 5.7
liter Hemi V8 or a 426 Horsepower Camaro SS, you can expect to be
overtaken by someone “blowing out the carbon” from their supercar
engine.
The original 1962 Volkswagen Beetle featured a
four-cylinder engine producing 40 horsepower. The 612 horsepower 2005
Porsche Carrera GT in which actor Paul Walker recently died was a
racecar by design. As such, it only tacitly met the legal requirements
of for registration as a street vehicle. 
It could do zero to sixty in 3.8 seconds and zero to one hundred in under seven seconds.
About seven seconds after driver Roger Rodas put
his foot down on the accelerator of the Rodas/Walker death vehicle, he
hit a street reflector and went airborne at one hundred miles per hour.
With no stability control to save them, both the driver and passenger
faced near instant death in a fast and furious single car accident. The
only thing we can be thankful for is that there was not a Volkswagen
Beetle noodling up the street at that time.
Typically, drivers of supercars see themselves as
fully capable of handling whatever happens on the freeways of
California. They will tout safety features, such
as bigger brakes and elaborate stability control features built into
their cars. Horsepower, they say, helps get them out of trouble, not
into it. For some that may be true. Other super
car drivers are nothing more than a menace on our roadways. The
problem is that even the most mild mannered 
driver can become ticked off and turn into a road-raging maniac.
Since 1978, the U.S. has had a gas-guzzler tax
for low efficiency vehicles. Depending on how poor the mileage
actually is, the tax ranges from $1,000 to $7,700. Since no one in
Congress or any state legislature is planning to limit the horsepower in
street-legal vehicles, we need to take another tack. What we need is
safety training and mitigation fees for high horsepower vehicles,
similar to what the State of Missouri already assesses. Depending on the horsepower of any particular passenger car, I propose the following:
Beginning
at 400 horsepower, each new passenger vehicle owner should be required
to take a one-day driver-training course, which would focus on
performance car driving. They would also pay a $1,000 fee that would
increase the number of highway patrol officers and vehicles on the
road. A vehicle with 500 horsepower would require a two-day course and a
$2,000 highway patrol mitigation fee. Likewise, a 600 horsepower
vehicle would require a three-day course and a $3,000 fee. For each
additional hundred horsepower, add a day to the driving course and
$1,000 in fees.
In the case of the Shelby GT 1000, with 1,200 horsepower, we might top
out with a five-day driver-training course and $6,000 in highway
patrol mitigation fees. With the total cost of that super-car estimated
at $210,000, it would be a small price to pay. Rather than putting a
dangerous weapon in the hands of an unskilled driver, we would know
that the driver had received sufficient training to handle the power
available under foot. Then, if the driver misbehaves on the freeways,
blowing an unsuspecting Volkswagen Beetle off the road, there would be a
better chance that the highway patrol would catch and reprimand the
errant supercar driver for his indiscretion.
By James McGillis at 05:49 PM | Technology | Comments (0) | Link
