There's dangers in this, unfortunately. Muscle cars from the 1970's and the modern equivalents for rich stupid people have more power than the tires can deliver to the ground at slow speeds so the tires spin, sometimes in ways that break the car out of control and kill you. And maybe an oncoming soccer mom with a van full of kids. They're lots of fun, right up till then. The extra power comes in handy at much higher speeds, but its the lower speed crashes where the tires break loose in a corner that are deadly. So that's power.
In driving games which have a good physics engine, like Forza Motorsport or Grand Tourismo, balance is king. You have to keep the engine attached to the road through tires and handling. Otherwise all the power is wasted and you wreck or die. One of the surest ways to ruin a car in Forza is to give it more horsepower without fixing its suspension and tires first. A car is designed to carry a certain load to a certain speed with a certain unsprung weight (tires, suspension, the rim the tire is mounted to, and the wheel hub the rim is bolted to. All that moves through bumps and supports the car under power, braking, etc. One of the easiest ways to improve the power to weight ratio is a lighter vehicle, which often means removing any comforts and luxuries.
A way to improve power is to remove restrictions to how the engine breathes and exhales, so air intake filter and exhaust manifold. This also increases the fuel consumption in many cases, but not always. For most daily drivers, reducing the friction in the engine with an oil change is a good idea, swapping the oil filter, air filter, and checking tire pressures are where they belong is also key to reducing rolling resistance and drain on the engine spinning to deliver power to the wheels, moving the car forwards. Excellent brakes allow you to stop later, meaning you can accelerate the straight longer, meaning you can go faster overall, even though you bleed off speed and lose energy every time you touch your brakes. The catch with brakes is you're estimating the braking surface is similar to the last time you touched them, so assume a great deal of risk the longer you delay and the harder you press them down. You might find a little gravel on that corner and not stop fast enough, wrecking or dying in the process. This is something that happens to drunk drivers, not estimating corners right and paying for it, hard.
I have found that you can balance power and weight ratio by sizing your vehicle to your needs. For most people, the Honda or Toyota Sedan is perfectly fine. Dull, yes, but it hauls you to work or takes the kids to school without any trouble. No fun on the twisties, but less likely to kill you than a tippy musclecar with a straight rear axle that can't find its ass with both hands on an imperfect corner and tends to lack modern technology like Limited Slip Differentials, around since the 1950's.
For example, motorcycle engines come in three sizes: 250cc, 650cc, and genital compensation. This is peculiar but a fact of economics. You can run a 250cc engine at much higher pressures using the most expensive gasoline and get 30 hp out of it. You can detune a 650 down to the same thing, and up to nearly 100 hp. This is the range of useful power you could possibly need on a 2 wheeled vehicle. This is irritating because a 400cc running at standard tuning is 30 HP and takes far less damage and cost compared to a highly tuned 250, costs the same, and you can charge more for it but including fuel injection and progressive suspension as standard, mounted to the more basic 250 frame. So long as it looks nice, its golden. But instead, manufacturers sleeve the cylinder and shorten the stroke on a 650, call it a 500, and live with the higher weight and lower performance. And generally charge as much as a 650 for it. It does have better fuel economy, but still, the 400, designed as a 400 from the outset, and fitted to a 250's frame, is cheaper for the manufacturer and the buyer. So why isn't a 400cc bike the standard best seller in America? Harley moved from Milwaukee to Tennessee, only uses non-union labor now, and the parts are imported from China, not made here. They just assemble them here. So what's the point of a Harley? If you're buying a Chinese or Thailand motorcycle imported, that's not American. So why pay more to con yourself?
I'm baffled. I really am. There are so many basic things. Baby boomers, who could afford motorcycles in their youths had 400cc bikes without all the stupid plastic, for very reasonable prices. Why can't we have that? I totally dig the design ethic of Cleveland Cycle Werks, using Chinese parts to assemble bikes, and not lie about it, cheap, selling them cheap instead of huge markup. I'd have one of those. A 250 that looks good? Sure! I'm not planning race speeds on a 250. I want side roads and twisty roads. Leave the highway to idiots going 80 mph. And since the Japanese won't do it, and the Europeans think 3 wheeled scooters are the best thing ever, this presents an available market to sell to. Make it cheap enough a "fail to launch" college graduate can buy one for his commute. Reduce his humiliation about being conned into a major with no future by unscrupulous professors with something to gain by lying to the gullible youth educated by communists in public schools. I went through that.
Higher education is exploitation.
It is the first lesson in adult evil.
They don't teach how to start a small business in college. And if you paid for college, you can't afford to pay off your student loans and survive the normal poverty costs of marketing your business at a loss like most businesses go through at first. And since most businesses fail and the person starting them is responsible for the loan repayment, incorporated or not, you mostly see people end up with debt. An entrepreneur just keeps trying until they succeed, pay off all the bad debts, and make money hand over fist. Nobody is doing this. They avoid engine making. They modify existing because its cheaper. They weld up an exhaust and wrap it in cheap pipe tape and pretend that's "custom". Its ugly, is what it is. I recently saw what could have been a beautiful bike with high scrambler exhaust but no heat shield. That's a burnt leg, a point more than half the commenters made right off the bat. The builder was incensed to be called out on it, but making a heat shield is really easy and should have been done and would have looked nice. So why didn't they? Laziness when this is your best possible advertisement to potential buyers? Don't do shoddy craftsmanship. It gets around. It will cost you your business. "Oh, they all do that" is why Americans buy Hondas instead of Fords or GM. And the American Car Industry still doesn't get it, even as Detroit openly flaunts its Free Fire Zone status as a third world decaying city of the future.
If you wanted to create a business starting with a 400cc engine, the smart way is to take elements from all the best 650cc engines out there, shrink the design by a third, using common parts where possible, and assign attachment points to a frame that either exists already waiting for a 400cc upgrade or build a frame from scratch using appropriate materials and quality control, since a broken weld on a bike frame may kill the rider. That would be bad. The above video has a few of these, but keep in mind the engines aren't designed from the ground up. They're either enlarged 250's or sleeved 650's, so the weight or compromises are already built in.
In similar vein, I find myself deeply curious about adapting very light cars to be even lighter and tuning the engine and transmission and brakes to this lighter weight, making them performers on twisty roads. I know from growing up on them that twisty roads require the best performance cars because you have to handle, brake, turn, accelerate, and drive at your very best or the road will kill you. I know because that's where I learned. My thought was not to worry about aerodynamics, since these are meant for lower speeds in the first place, and design them with vintage looking bodies on the outside. How would you like a 2CV with a modern Japanese I4 turbo engine and race frame underneath? And an MP3 player compatible stereo? And A/C that works.
Apply the same ideas, only better. The technology for it is old. It is certainly possible. Make the body out of fiberglass instead of metal, so it's light. Make the frame out welded steel tubing, each joint checked for faults, like a race car. Offer paddle shifters or a smooth 5-speed gear box, setup to run the car up to 60 mph, but no faster. These old car bodies were unstable faster, since seams and things which were distinctive to their look weren't very aerodynamic and the styling was styling, not functional. A proper Fiat 500 was a deathtrap. So was the 2CV. The originals both had floppy canvas roofs. Modern poor educated fools, the Millenials, can't afford $70K cars with electric batteries or supercharged V12 engines. They can't. They need cheap but fun transportation. With a bit of style so they can enjoy it and not be ashamed by boredom. Those who live in dry places with side roads will ride motorcycles when weather allows, but when it doesn't, a Vintage looking cheap car would be a nice alternative. I plan to look into the rules on smog-exempt vehicles so I can see about a hot rod that I've rebuilt in such a way to support my goals. Someday the 1990 vehicles will be exempt and I can rebuild a Miata that's even lighter and turbocharge the engine so it has the power to match the suspension.
And someday we'll want some of the better ideas from modern cars put into the future vehicles of tomorrow. Here's a list of cool stuff.
Variable stiffness suspensions are neat. Iron filings in the shock absorber fluid allows you to vary the viscosity using electromagnets controlled by a computer so the stiffness is appropriate to the road surface and speed of the vehicle, meaning you can drive on many kinds of roads from smooth and fast to rough, in the same car with a better chance of retaining control.
Variable ride height can be helpful too, particularly when your roads really suck. I don't know how to do that, but its worth finding out. Perhaps hydraulic lifts affecting the double wishbone position? If you make the car lift up a couple inches it shouldn't make it fatally tippy, though it will be more tippy than when lowered. Range Rover has this.
Electrically spun lower pressure turbo chargers are a big thing in modern engines, giving you the power boost to a small engine, which is generally thrifty, without the turbo lag that can kill you in a corner and annoys drivers by the power coming long after you pressed the throttle. The electric motor spins the turbine so its always ready for your needs. These are in the new F1 cars, but similar are in the Ford Fiesta ST. Low pressure turbos are a revelation in sports cars today. I want my next car to have one.
Solar panels on the roof. You'd think that's dumb, but hear me out. Modern glue on solar panels are cheap. As a trickle charger to the battery, you can leave it unplugged and still top up the battery.
Carbon fiber body panels. Duh. Low weight, exotic shapes for aerodynamics, high rigidity.
Aluminum car frame. Irritating to weld but reasonably cheap, light weight (half the weight of steel), strong enough to upgrade from a steel tube birdcage. Some kit cars start with this underneath, and any $2000 TIG welder with argon gas can weld it by hand, same as it can weld steel and stainless. Downside is you have to design it to work with the softest form of aluminum unless you can afford to heat treat the metal after welding, which is usually cost prohibitive. Still, the aluminum box can be assembled from sheets, is easy to cut, and good enough for a performance car. Popular in Europe, not in the USA, but Ford is starting to have them for trucks outside the crash cage.
Aluminum engines and transmission case, transfer case, etc. Weight reduction at work. It baffles me that cast iron is still used for engine blocks. That's 3x the weight. Its crap. A Subaru with all aluminum cases would be hundreds of pounds lighter and possibly become nimble instead of sluggish.
Rally shifters. They look a little odd, but in function on a sequential race gearbox? WOW. Fun. In a high revving engine that's a great way to make a car exciting instead of searching for a gear in an H pattern floor shifter.
Double wishbone suspension. Mustang is FINALLY getting them, after they've been in use for most of a century in other cars.
Really? You pretend this is new?
See? Keeps the tire planted on the road. Basic stuff, really. Now for complicated, check out the pushrod suspension.
Or if that's too complicated...
Like his version better?
All these things means a car could have a smaller and more thrifty engine that weighs less and wastes less fuel, or a normal engine that makes that car really fast. Good times.
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