Generally speaking, I treat the subject of power the same way as I treat pretty much any aspect of personal ownership, e.g. with guns:
“Why do you need such a powerful gun?” — Because I want it, and because MYOFB.
However, I am somewhat at a loss when it comes to modern cars, which to me seem terribly over-powered relative to the average driver’s ability to pilot the thing, e.g. the 1,000hp Bugatti Veyron:
An awful lot of Veyrons have been crashed relative to the actual number found on the roads (i.e. excluding the “investment” Bugattis, the motoring equivalent of the gun world’s “safe queens”), and the same is true of all the hypercars. Even Rowan Atkinson, who is an excellent driver, managed to write off his Pagani Zonda.
I don’t even want to think of the accident rate among redneck hypercars, e.g. the Dodge SRT or the Camaro ZL1, both with plus-600hp engines.
Now I’m not saying that cars like this should be banned or restricted in any way (see my thoughts on powerful guns, above), but the question I want to throw out to you, O My Readers, is: what do you think is the engine (cylinder number, size, horsepower, whatever) that best serves the average driver? For the sake of discussion, let’s ignore trucks and SUVs, which may have different needs and uses, and concentrate on cars.
And to make it more interesting, let’s split it into four-door saloons and two-door sports cars.
My thoughts will appear below the fold, but avoid going there until you’ve worked out your own two examples.
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