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Comment by yabones | Hacker News Reader

When cost and reliability is no concern, you can do truly crazy things...

> 2.0-liter boxer engine ... 670 horsepower and 680 lb-ft of torque

Those are V10 numbers coming from something the size you'd find in an econo-box.

Obviously unlike your Camry this thing is not going to do 300,000 KMs over its lifetime, and will be rebuilt frequently. This is the extreme end of the engineering tradeoff, and it's interesting to see what happens when the scale tips all the way over.

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Crazy thing is those numbers are low enough to actually be more reliable.

We've got locals pushing 1,200+ HP out of K24's in their civics.

People have been building 700hp WRXes (2L boxer) for decades.

BMW had a 1.5L turbo inline-4 that made 1300+ hp (called the M12) used in some F1 cars

Edit- though, its redline was about double this Brat's...

2 liters is hardly econobox, even without a turbo. A new honda civic sedan is 1.3 liters (NA). 2.0 is more typical for sedans imho. The 2.0 turbo in this biuld originally turned 250+ hp (wrx) which is well beyond econo anything.

Heh, very true. These days most new cars have a 1.0-1.5 turbo (or hybrid) rather than a larger 2.0 NA. And even 20 years ago most European cars were around 1.5 or less because of their higher fuel prices and registration taxes.

I'm a bit spoiled with the beefy 2.5 in my Mazda... Though it's still about 480 HP less than this beast ;)

That was a big thing with Japanese sports cars in general: proving more cylinders was a dead end and just extra weight. Pretty much all of the big JDM classics of the 90s and 2000s are 4-cyl (aside from Mazda's rotary engine cars) putting down 200-300hp range with favorable power/weight.

Sure, if you completely disregard the legendary straight sixes from Toyota and Nissan (RB, JZ...). I agree 4 bangers are huge historically in JDM sports cars, but so too is the straight six - the classic Z cars, Supras, GT-Rs...

And restrained power figures due to the 'gentlemen's agreement' they had in Japan.

I can't think of any from the 90s that weren't 6 cylinders. Nissan 300Z, Nissan Skyline GT-R, Honda/Acura NSX, Toyota Supra, and Mitsubishi 3000GT VR-4 were all 6 cylinders.

The only exceptions I can think of are the Subaru Impreza WRX/STI, and the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution.

Toyota MR2, Honda S2000, Mazda MX-5, Nissan S13/14/15 and 180SX

A majority of those made in the ballpark of 150hp or less, with the exception of the S2000. A few variants of the MR2 and the Nissan made over 200, but not many.

None ever came near Japan’s gentlemen’s agreement of “276” hp.

Yeah except the LS engine is still lighter than most 4 cylinder turbos. It's lighter than a lot of NA 4 cylinders, in fact.

The reason they stayed with smaller engines in Japan was because of taxes on displacement.

You should look into what they were building for group B rally 40 years ago. Absolute monsters.

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