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

Larger engines and more pistons don’t necessary translate to more power and speed.

There’s a lot of factors involved here; combustion concept, is the engine Super or Turbo charged, what kind of fuel, alloys used, displacement, etc. Basically you can design a 4-cylinder engine to be more powerful than and 8-cylinder and vice versa.

Also 4-cylinder engines are smaller and lighter, and lighter cars can go faster.

One thing to note is arguably the most powerful racing car engine ever built, the BMW M12, was a 4-cylinder Turbocharged engine.