Power ratings for engines can be strange. Most of the time the unit is horsepower: 550 ft/lbs per second. Sometimes you’ll see a different system, like PS or other terms, which are metric measurements for horsepower. That’s the force needed to raise 75 kilograms against the strength of Earth’s gravity one meter in one second. And then there is the kilowatt, which for ease of understanding is equivalent to 1.34 horsepower. The Aussies love to use kilowatts to explain the power and potential of an engine. Frankly, any time we have to break out Google Translate to figure out the kind of grunt an engine has, we normally just look for the performance, the dragstrip ET and trap speed, or the amount of smoke created in the first ten seconds of a burnout contest – this is Australia we are talking about, after all. But even the most Metric-averse individual can understand that one megawatt is something to behold. You can say that your car has thousands of horsepower. That’s impressive, no doubt. But saying that your car makes one megawatt of power…there’s a bit of arrogance with that. That isn’t just a big figure that impresses. That’s almost like a F-You way of explaining things. One megawatt is about a fifth of a freight train’s output, or if sustained for an hour, would be the kind of power that could keep up a neighborhood. Or, in the case of this unassuming Holden Kingswood, is enough to shoot it down the strip like a bullet. Shocking!
Blah blah blah – those Aussies are metric-loving idiots who wouldn’t know what horsepower was even if they were being torn apart by two wild horses.