I was all excited to hear about automakers starting to wise up and make a sub-$30k car without all the extra electronics and a more modest battery capacity...

I’m exhausted with the whole “1,000 hp is the new 500 hp” trend. Every single build you see now had a completely unusable amount of power outside of a drag strip.

Porsche 912E

As usual the neglected station wagon has been ignored in the comments section so I’ll add my two cents. I don’t know how I got by shuffling kids around without my 603 bhp wagon.

I recall this discussion started by Matt Hardigree (Or Torch? I don’t remember) many moons ago, and the number turned out to be 300.

In my experience, 200 horsepower is adequate for most things, 300 is plenty for virtually anything, and everything above 300 is just excessive for the street.

Didn’t Jalopnik address the issue of optimal horsepower level a few years back? IIRC, the consensus was that 300 horsepower was ideal.

I feel like 200 - 250 bhp is just fine for American roads & highways, and I’ve always said that anything over 400 bhp is pretty much unusable on a public road. That latter figure has crept closer to 500 bhp with how heavy modern cars have gotten.

Need or want?

I’m usually pretty happy with 90ish. 

I don’t know.... A Rivian with 835HP is a pure delight to drive.

I guess it comes down to “need” as well as what that power is moving. For me, my daily driver is just on the good side of “need” for me. o-60 takes between 12 and 16 seconds but I can get up to freeway speeds fine and hang with 80 mph traffic all day long. I never want for everyday speed, even if I could certainly use…

Eh, I’ve yet to see a new Z06 in the flesh (I live in the sticks), so if someone brought one to our little town car show I’d be happy. When the new ZR1 drops I’d absolutely shit a brick to see one here. 

Ok, real suggestions....

And which could also be had with a 6MT, at least through 2018. A friend of mine taught me to drive stick on his HR-V so equipped.

Thank you for this. I enjoy a good car show for whatever. There’s a guy that brings his old 80's Pontiac (a mild sport variant model) to the local show. He never wins and he knows this, but he tells a great story about his (now deceased) wife used to drive it to her work and then passed it through the family. Now it’s…

A thousand times this. It’s the truly perfect Jalop answer.

I’m glad someone here gets it. This article is basically The Problem With Car Culture. Why bother going to a car show if you’re annoyed by seeing cars you don’t like? I like seeing purple hot rods, classic Mustangs, restomod, corvettes, beaters, etc. If something doesn’t spark my interest, then I move on.

Ah cool, almost an entire slideshow about gatekeeping. Neat.

I go to a particular Cars and Coffee every Saturday morning. I take the back roads there and the back roads back. So I get to do both.