Holy Horsepower!

I think it’s time to explain one of my automotive benchmarks. When I first became interested in cars, I didn’t know much about horsepower and torque. Thinking numbers between 500 and 700 were generally sufficient, I ignorantly scoffed at puny cars like the upcoming 2005 Mustang GT. The 210 horsepower V6 wasn’t meant to be quick, but the 4.6L V8 had only 300 horsepower. Ha! Might as well be a kitchen blender, right? Keep in mind, my first issue of Car and Driver included track-test shootout of some of the fastest cars available. My information about powerful cars was sufficiently skewed by the fact that this issue would spark my automotive interest. It’s not every month that a major automotive publication has a performance shootout like that…but I didn’t know this.

           

Maybe half a year later, my horsepower assumptions were obliterated. I was coming home from a classmate's Bat mitzvah, and I ended up carpooling with a friend whose dad owned the then-new 2005 Mustang GT. Regardless of my thoughts on power, I certainly thought the Mustang looked amazing. The hood was long and menacing, with two large round fog lights in between the two headlights in the grill. The whole car had a hunkered-down stance, and the front end looked like it was daring you to look at it. Personally, I couldn’t stop looking at it. I was told by my friend that he and his father waxed it weekly with a special wax for the shiny and deep black paint. Then there was the exhaust. I knew that I’d heard cars with bigger engines, but this sounded sooo much meaner than anything I’d ever heard before. The sound was deep and throaty when idling. Under load, the exhaust would snarl initially, then grow to an angry bellow as the V8 neared the redline. I was giddy with the prospect of getting a ride in such an apparently sinister car.

            I entered through the passenger door (the Mustang is a two-door car), sliding over the forward-canted front seat to get to the very small bench seat in the rear. The car smelled fairly new, with the hint of cigar smoke presenting itself if you really paid attention. Believe me, I was paying attention. The leather seats looked fairly comfortable, and there was a stubby little shifter on the transmission tunnel. Towards the end of my experience in the Mustang, I was surprised by a little acceleration run. I won’t say what speed was attained, but my thought of horsepower vanished as soon as the pedal hit the floor. Half of first gear was just screeching and tire smoke, but the other half was unbelievable. I can’t imagine that a normal person experiences such an amazing surge of acceleration anywhere else. Yes, certain pilots do. So do drag racers, and maybe Usain Bolt. I wasn’t any of those things, so I was absolutely astounded. The relentless heave hardly let up as our speed went up, and we three occupants quickly found ourselves doing…many miles per hour. That day was when I realized what 300 horsepower and 315 lb-ft. of torque can do in a moderately light car. Currently, I generally think anything with at least the power to weight ratio of a Mustang GT is fast. Until very recently, I had never driven anything more powerful than my Dad’s 275 horsepower Lincoln Continental. Though the Continental is quite fast, it isn’t quite on par with a Mustang GT. I was able to drive something that trumps both of those, though. The 2010 Camaro SS has 426 horsepower when fitted with a manual, and that’s what I drove. Check back here soon, I’ll have it up within the next few days.

-Stephen