400 Horsepower: The Magic Number

Four hundred horsepower. Since the 1960s, it's been the magic number. The 2008 Corvette boasts the most powerful standard engine in Corvette history with exactly 436 horses. And that's net horsepower.

In the glory days of the muscle car, horsepower was more often an advertising claim than real fact. Horsepower was measured on the test stand, and usually rounded up from there by the marketing department.

Still, a 400-hp rating bought bragging rights, and promised a tire-shredding good time (usually, but not always, on the drag strip).

Chevrolet broke the barrier in 1962, with a 409-cubic-inch/409-horse V8, most often seen in the hot Impala SS, and immortalized in song by The Beach Boys. Ford responded quickly, with a mid-'62 406-cubic-inch V8, rated at 405 horses in both the Galaxie and the Mercury Monterey. By '63, the 406 had been bored out to 427 cubic inches, with a top rating of 425 horsepower. Briefly during the 1970 model year, Chevrolet offered a 454-cubic-inch V8 in the Chevelle SS. With this car, advertised horsepower reached a new high: 450!

Pontiac was building some rear pavement-pounders in the 1960s- notably, the Super Duty Catalinas and Tri-Power GTOs- but the first Pontiac to officially earn a 400-hp rating is the Australian-built 2005 GTO.

Oldsmobile had only one 400-hp car: the 1970 Toronado GT. Buick never
made it, and until the new CTS-V, neither had Cadillac.

The legendary Hemi V8 (optional in Dodge and Plymouth muscle cars from 1966 through 1971) was rated, conservatively, at 425 hp in its "street" version.

Today, the latest from Detroit in the horsepower wars has Chevrolet's ZR1 Corvette putting down an earthquake-inducing 620 HP!

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