The first thing I always hear from people who ask me for advice on their cars: “I want it to go faster.” They don’t care about handling or aero so much as they do the horsepower figure, or the quarter-mile time. They have absolutely no clue just how badly 500 ft/lbs of torque is going to twist their car. They won’t understand that there is genuinely such a thing as too much horsepower. You aren’t Mark Donohue. You aren’t Richard Petty, and you damn sure aren’t John Force. We aren’t discouraging horsepower injections, we are just saying that in the scheme of a vehicle build, going straight for horsepower isn’t always the smart idea, especially if you intend on beating on the car at some point.

Take the Camaro you will see Matt Farah drive in the video below. It’s a 1992 Chevrolet Camaro RS that has been worked over from stem to stern, with one notable exception: the powertrain. Other than the horrid noise that can only mean aftermarket pipes of some kind, what we have here is a 3.1L V6, with all 191 cubic inches doing their best to uphold what the visuals promise. The suspension is done. That diffuser wouldn’t look out of place on the back of a Lotus Esprit. But that V6 has kept the car toned down enough that owner Nick can get dialed in as a driver before the inevitable LS swap takes place.