New at this, trying to understand horse power

Yes, at Rockingham - its an oval built a few years ago. Those pics look like the Australian GP though.

Dave Milne, Scotland '91 Grand Wagoneer, '99 TJ

Pretty decent, and twice as much as the Muslim countries of Kuwait: ($2.1m) and UAE: ($2m) combined contributed to helping their Muslim brethren in Indonnesia. Not that Saudi was much better at 10 million, but at least they all contributed something unlike Iran, anything ending -istan, Turkey etc.

Dave Milne, Scotland '91 Grand Wagoneer, '99 TJ

Yes, uses for utility vehicles like Jeeps are for offroad climbing and such which needs a lot of low end torque and slow speeds. Also, they don't handle well at 140mph. :) They don't need a high winding 13,000 rpm engine like your Nissan example.

Gearing in the transmission and differential do take advantage of higher reving engines and also lower torque engines and everything in between. You choose the gearing to best suit your needs and what your engine provides.

It's all in what you want and what you want to spend. I prefer multiple vehicles to satisfy these 'needs'. A Jeep and a sports car is a nice combination. I personally don't get the meld of the two into a vehicle like the FX or the Cayenne.

Bill R U seriously trying to say that there are no modern OHC engines that can match the horsepower/torque of a 50's cast-iron V8? Have you ever heard of Ferrari? What about Lambourghini? I'll bet an Acura NSX can easily match any

-Bill (remove "botizer" to reply via email)

Pretty good fuel consuption also, only 56 gallons per mile. You could design any type of engine to get better performance by making it burn higher combustion fuel at a fast rate. But vehicles that will be driven on roads need a balance between fuel consumption and power.

Today's OHC engines are generally designed as smaller engines for use in smaller cars. The produce a nice amount of power and are fuel efficient. They are generally more expensive to design than a pushrod engine.

Today's high torque larger trucks, SUVs, and sports cars use larger engines that are OHV pushrods. These have gotten much better at fuel consumption than they used to be. These are cheaper to build, since the designs haven't changed much.

Over the next 20 years, even large cars, trucks, and SUV will probably start switching over to using mostly OHC engines. Manufacturers haven't put the capital into designing large OHC engines until recently.

There is also the argument that pushrod engines are easier to maintain and repair out in the sticks.

Dave Milne, Scotland '91 Grand Wagoneer, '99 TJ

While Ford did make a 427 SOHC motor, the Boss 429 was a pushrod motor.

You know the 30 year rolling exemption will end in April, right?

I wish he would, but I think it's pretty far down the list of stuff those idiots in Sacramento have screwed up.