Why V8 Guys Get Mad at 4 Cylinder Car Owners
When you think of high horsepower number, you probably think of cubic inches and massive blowers protruding from the hood of old muscle cars; I admit that I do too. I grew up around a bunch of gear-heads who worshiped anything that slid out of the GM factory between 1960 and 1972; that include the Chevy Corvette, Camaro, Nova to mention a few. A lot of these cars came with the option of having a big block engine, for example the SS models of the Camaro and Nova came with the 396 BB or the 454 BB (big block) motor. I’m not sure what the horsepower rating was, but it was definitely a selling point of the car much like MPG is to modern cars today.
These engine were notorious for producing especially high horsepower numbers if you modified the engine with aftermarket car parts like headers, intakes and a bigger carburetor. One of easiest ways to get a lot of power out of these engines was to force induction through them, also known of a supercharger or ‘blower’. A blown big block Chevy motor was easily capable of producing well over 750 horsepower and it wasn’t uncommon to see engines dyno horsepower into the 1000 + range.
Technology has come a long way since the 1960s and 70s. A lot of car guys have switched their forced induction preference from superchargers, which are belt driven, to turbo chargers, which are exhaust driven. It makes a lot of old school guys to see a car with half the cylinders they grew up with make nearly as much if not more power than they could! It’s hard to admit for some, but it’s proven time and time again that a carefully tuned 4 cylinder engine can make the same amount of power as engine twice their size, i.e. the V8 Chevy engine. Granted these setups typically do not have the torque, but they do run similar quarter mile times, which is what the old school guys pride themselves on. I guess until the V8’s show some kind of advantage over 4 cylinder engine, most guys will sacrifice a little torque for quadruple the gas mileage in everyday driving. Performance chips like the ones found here squeak even more MPG gallon out of 4 cylinders, but aid the old school V8 guys as well.
Alan McGee is a freelance writer from MN. Article Source: