The family muscle car

To describe its current marketing approach, the auto industry might want to dust off the old slogan "power to the people." Detroit and the foreign automakers are in a horsepower war not seen since the muscle-car era of the 1960s. While the most powerful cars of that time cranked out about 300 horsepower by today's standards, this year's sports cars pack an even greater wallop. The Mustang Cobra, for example, boasts 390 horsepower. The Dodge Viper, a car best known for pushing the envelope, belts out 500.

And that's just sports cars. Family sedans and SUVs are following the trend, blowing right past those old muscle-car levels.

"Consumers always want more power," says Bob Lutz, head of product development at General Motors and a man widely recognized as one of the biggest players in the automotive industry.

That much was clear at this month's North American International Auto Show in Detroit. Advancing an age-old crosstown race, Ford and Chevy each debuted family-sedan concept cars packing 590 and 420 horsepower, respectively. Nissan introduced its new Maxima sedan with "260 horsepower plus." (A mere four years ago, its 190-horsepower Maxima was one of the most muscular sedans on the street.)

Also across the Pacific, Mitsubishi and Subaru each introduced street versions of their compact racing sedans - the Evolution VIII and the WRX STi - boasting 280 and 300 horsepower, respectively. Infiniti offers two luxury family sedans - the M45 and the Q45 - each with a 345-horsepower V8.

The Europeans have eagerly joined the fray: BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Audi each have small sedans with between 330 and 350 horsepower. Mercedes-Benz offers a 500-horsepower mid-size sedan. And Porsche has rolled out its long-heralded 440-horsepower, twin-turbo SUV, the Cayenne. At the top of the pile is Cadillac's 1,000-horsepower luxury car, the Sixteen (as in 16 cylinders).

It's enough to leave even a dyed-in-the-wool car guy slack-jawed in wonder. These were professional drag-strip numbers only a few years ago.

"Power feeds off our emotions. Most drivers like to be able to push the pedal to the floor and get a little thrill," says Chris Cedargren, principal of Nextrend, an automotive consultant firm in Thousand Oaks, Calif.

Still, the question on many observers' minds at the Detroit show was, "How much is too much?"

It's hard to quantify. After all, some family sedans with power ratings on the low side of 200 feel plenty peppy. But other heavy, 300-plus horsepower cars still feel slow.

Today's horsepower wars are enabled by advances in technology - and to some degree, demanded by them. Aside from behemoth SUVs, even today's small cars are weighed down with enough electronics to launch several moon missions. Add to that the heavy copper wiring found in today's cars and you wind up with weighty vehicles that need more power to get going.

Fortunately, advances in basic internal-combustion engines have allowed engineers to extract more power from a gallon of gasoline. Those advances gave automakers a choice: Produce cars with the same power using less gas, or build vehicles that boost power and burn the same amount of fuel.

Many automakers have chosen the latter.

Not everyone is thrilled by the trend. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), for example, has protested car ads that "glorify speed."

"In general, vehicles with a lot of horsepower encourage fast driving, and speeding is a leading factor in fatal crashes," says Russ Rader, spokesman for the IIHS.

The move to more power has also upset environmental activists.

According to Dan Becker, a lobbyist for the Sierra Club, the average miles- per-gallon rating of all new cars actually sold off dealer lots today is declining. A lot of that decline, he says, "is because horsepower is increasing, and a lot of it is [heavy] trucks with big horsepower. This Cadillac [Escalade] and other outrages are really abominations."

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