how much horsepower in a car is considered good or fast?? and is 260 hp good??

Answer 1

WHat does the car weigh? The most important thing is 'power to weight ratio'. 260 is nothing in a 5000lb truck

Answer 2

How much horsepower is good depends on what you need. More important than total horsepower is horsepower per pound of vehicle weight. It takes more horsepower to move more weight at a given rate and more weight will also adversly affect fuel economy, braking and handling. Using speed and acceleration as performance criteria a 190hp Lotus Elise is faster than a 500hp SRT10 truck. Obviously, if you need to haul people or stuff, the Lotus won't do the trick. So you have to decide what you need/want in a vehicle and go from there.

We are living in the golden age of horsepower with a number of cars coming right off the lot with 500+ horsepower. This has benifits for cars across the board as even small Toyotas and Hondas have better power without sacrificing economy.

260 is a great number for a small car and decent for just about anything else. That's as much or more power than just about all stock autos had from the mid 70's till the late 80's - including Corvettes, Mustangs, and even Porches and Ferraris.

260hp is a pretty common figure nowdays for midsize perfomance sedans and will typically give 0-60 times in the 7 second range. In a smaller car 260 can give some really good numbers. The Dodge SRT-4 had 235 and was one of the quickest cars you could buy for less than $40k with a 0-60 in the mid 5s.

Hope that answers your question!

Answer 3

i mechanic for a living,and own a shop,260 is good if you have a real light weight car,,,if not it will pull it ok..but anything over 300 is a good amount of horse power,,but again,,it all depends on the car,you take 260 ,in a small car and it would run off and leave a lot of the old hot rods that are around,,because there pretty heavy cars, i have a Mazda 626 with a Chevy 350 in it,,and i cant hold it down,,it gets a little hairy at times with it.but it only weighs around 2600 pounds,that's the bad part of it,,its too light,,but 260 is pretty good,,hope this helped good luck ,happy new years.

Answer 4

Actually, two factors come into play.
1. power to weight ratio is important for rapid starts (0-60--1/4 mile etc.)
2. coefficient of drag is the really important factor in top end speed.
all other factors being equal a CD difference of .01 will make 3 mph difference top end.
**rear wheel horse power is the power that actually gets to the ground-after the junk on the engine and the power loss through the drive train. the hottest motorcycles will not reach 180 mph and have 165 rear wheel HP with a weight of less than 400 #
for a car to match that a 3000# car would need 1300 HP AT THE REAR WHEEL (normal power loss through the drive line is 15-20% The punch line a motorcycle has a CD of around .65 the average hot carr has a CD of .3 to .35 the ZO6 does close to 200 mph with 1/4 the HP of the bike.

Answer 5

260 is pretty good, but it really depends on the power to weight ratio, some trucks have upwards of 400hp but would get smoked by a civic in a race just because of the weight difference, in a lotus elice (a very fast sports car) they use a 190hp toyota engine and they are faster than most 500hp cars cause they are so much lighter.,

so basicly im saying 260 is alot if its a smaller car

Answer 6

260 HP is pretty good. Power to weight ratio will also be a determining factor. Also, it would depend on how your car is geared. No matter how much power you have, if you don't have the correct gear ratios, the power will be wasted. A lot of your speed also depends on your transmission.

Answer 7

whether you have 260 or 500 its all how you can get it to the ground efficiently (gear ratio).

Answer 8

That ain't nothin' compared to the Z572 crate engine from chevy. It kicks out 720 hp STOCK!

Answer 9

260 is real good, if you car is light and small it's even better

Answer 10

try to hit 300 man its good if you got a light car but you want all american speed try hooking up a super charger to get some speed