Cheating on horsepower ratings is not an uncommon practice in the automotive world. In theory it's not unlike a food company putting less calories on the package than what the food contains but in reality a few less calories will cost a lot less than a few less horsepower.
Sports cars manufactures often report lower output figures than what the car and the engine actually delivers, even today !
This technique saves them a lot of money and of course saves us, the sports cars lovers, a lot of money too. The expected winnings from a new sports cars model are not as high as from a family sedan or a compact SUV. It's the easiest way to go around newly imposed taxes on emissions and cheat EPA and insurance houses. Even further, manufacturers often adjust the desired horsepower in order to get a more NHRA classification. In reality they didn't lie about the figures, just measured the power in conditions that were more favorable to their needs.
There are numerous ways to cheat, on of the tricks for lowering the insurance cost and category is to measure the peak horsepower below the max engine speed or when decreasing the RPM. If sports cars manufacturers wanted to achieve opposite results they would measure hp at the crank and not at the wheels or use an open-exhaust system. There are plenty of combos and tweaks that produce the desired results.
Either way figures can be manipulated but lets face it there are a lot more cars that are underrated than the once that are overrated, so here is our list of five cars that lied about their power ratings and gave us more than what we thought we got. Here's a spoiler, no Muscle cars, they will be covered in a different article.
Ford GT
Years: 2005-2006
The Ford GT began as a concept car designed in anticipation of the automaker's centennial year and as part of its drive to showcase and revive its "heritage" names such as Mustang and Thunderbird. At the 1995 Detroit Auto Show, the Ford GT90 concept was shown. At the 2002 auto show, Ford unveiled a new GT40 Concept car.
There are few lucky dogs that didn't even know how lucky they were when they pre-ordered the revived legend that is the Ford GT. Apart from the social factor that comes with going to the petrol station every two minutes to refill the car, the 5.4L supercharged Modular V8 engine officially generated 550 hp at the crank and 500 feet-pounds of torque. Of course numerous dyno tests suggest a different story, they report more than 550 hp at the wheels !
The simple math suggest that this car produces more than 630 ponies at the crank if universally recognized formula for the 15% drivetrain loss is taken into account.
There are few lucky dogs that didn't even know how lucky they were when they pre-ordered the revived legend that is the Ford GT. Apart from the social factor that comes with going to the petrol station every two minutes to refill the car, the 5.4L supercharged Modular V8 engine officially generated 550 hp at the crank and 500 feet-pounds of torque. Of course numerous dyno tests suggest a different story, they report more than 550 hp at the wheels !
The simple math suggest that this car produces more than 630 ponies at the crank if universally recognized formula for the 15% drivetrain loss is taken into account.
