Hope the OG didnt repost however I found this recent episode very interesting.

My question for those who viewed it was the 1/4 mile track scenes where these 500+hp monsters (Viper, LFA, AstonMartin) were beaten stupid by modified civics, evo's etc.....I mean in some cases they were literally blown off the line. Granted I realize the cop cars were super modified track machines and they stood no chance but the other cars appeared streetable?...

Im not a drag racer in any sense but was the poor showing of the cars featured related to bad driving (top gear guys)or can those little turbocharged 4cyl machines get that fast??

 

If you don't mind rebuilding your motor every other day, sure.

 

any car can be made to be stupid fast. You can get a 9 sec civic, which would obliterate those 500+ hp cars you mention.

However, the civic can only do so many pulls

 

You guys beat me to it..........you can make a lawn mower run 9s in the 1/4, but the motor would only last 1 run.

Speed alone is cheap.

 

It was not poor driving. You can make many sporty or economy cars really fast mostly with forced induction, faster then exotics but it will in most cases heavily effect driveability and reliability unless you tune it right and beef up the internals. I have seen pretty heavily modded civics, crx's, integras, EVO's, STI's, Mustangs, last a while and not have problems doing several runs with beefed up the internals.

Supra's can handle pretty big hp upgrades with stock internals, so can Honda S2000's as the engine internals are forged.

Civics and crxs are very lightweight, well under 3000lbs and made more lightweight for the track by stripping out interiors which is why they can be so quick when modded. Cars like the Aston Martin weigh much more which hurts drag times.

I still would much rather have a stock Aston Martin, LFA, or Viper then a quicker modded economy car.