How do cars with a four cylinder engine go faster than a V8 engine?

Question

Like a Ford Crown Victoria vs a Honda Civic.

In: Engineering

Answer 1

Older cars were far less efficient. In the 70s, there were 7.0 liter v-8s that made less than 200hp. As technology has advanced, we’ve learned to get more and more power out of smaller and smaller engines, couple that with lighter materials in the build process, better aerodynamics and you get faster, more reliable cars. Not all car platforms are using the latest AMD greatest tech, in fact some cars are still built on 15-20 year old platforms, so you’ll get a lot of efficiency variance.