Dyno-Proven Horsepower Combos- Car Craft Magazine

“I am the proud owner of a 500-hp, 11-second street machine.” Or so you say. Talk is cheap, but timeslips and dynos don’t lie. Attempting to cut through all the BS for the second year in a row, we followed a cross-section of 10 street machines as they put their pedal where their mouths were, spinning the rollers (if not their yarns) on a portable Dynojet chassis dyno at the 2000 Car Craft Summer Cruise in St. Paul, Minnesota. Just to keep things interesting, we first grilled each owner about the details of their engine combo and how fast their ride runs in the quarter-mile, and then made them guess the rear-wheel power it would make before it went on the dyno. We also threw in our best educated guess. Unlike last year where the owner estimates were sometimes widely off the mark, four out of 10 car owners came within 20 hp of their vehicle’s output, with two of them getting within two digits! That’s a heck of a lot better than we did, despite the aid of various performance simulations. Well, there’s always next year!

Check out the combos listed in the sidebars below.