Enthusiam is good....acting like you are on Uranus and oblivious to reality is not so good

 

Hmm... guess I should have used the 'winkie' emoticon there with that statement. I actually considered that but I thought the sarcasm was obvious enough without it. Oh well.

Seriously though. If I'm being unrealistic... I'm not the only one. I daresay there's some here going just as far to the other extreme. GM's been thru some close calls before... and they pulled thru just fine. I believe they will do so again.

 

bmw.com has the European output numbers. 333 is the SAE net horsepower of the M3 as sold in North America. I think most, if not all, of the difference is down to metric versus imperial and different measuring standards. I know that 343 metric hp is the same as 338 imperial hp. The other 5 are probably the SAE versus DIN (I think, or maybe there's a new EC standard). But there might be a slight tuning difference too. The torque difference is something like 7 lb ft, and the entire difference would be tuning or measurement standards.

In any case, when comparing the American GTO with the American M3, the numbers are 333 versus 400. Not that 10hp is any huge difference.

But enough obsessing about the M3.

 

If I'm not mistaken the current S2000's redline is down from 9000rpm to 7800 rpm in U.S. models, thanks to the "stroker" engine. Maybe stroke it another 200cc and the redline comes down to something an auto can handle. Or design a new auto for it???

 

Germans rate their cars using DIN which is in "metric horsepower." hence the difference. The PS (Pferdestärke = horse strength, used in Germany, Japan, and South America) is equivalent to ~735 W, or about 98.6% of SAE hp, yeilding the results teal98 gave.

 

I believe the new redline is 8200 rpm for the f22c they use in it now. They could probably stroke it alittle more, but the s2000 engine is undersquared to begin with I believe, so I wonder how much more they could stroke it before the rod/stroke ratio starts becoming way out of whack. There have been some known engine problems with high revving Hondas where some types of their engines create too much thrust on the cylinder wall to be acceptable due to the shorter rod.