Who says perfomance is going away?

I remember when I was a kid, Volkswagen brought the GTI to market. It had a rip-roaring 88 horsepower. A few years later Honda/Acura came out with their VTEC engines that had as much as 118 HP. I read the car mags and drooled over the cars with the handling to match the power. Note this, I was not born when muscle cars ruled so this was my first exposure to "real" horsepower.

Fast forward 10 years and I bought my first, of now 11 (!), BMW's...a 325 sedan, sport package, white with black leather and the sport package. I thought the car flew and it had only 189 HP. A couple of cars later, I had an M3. Now that car had POWER!!! With a rousing 240Hp, not many cars on the road could match the straight line speed, much less the handling and braking.
Let's go to today's medium priced V6 Japanese cars. The Mazda 6-276HP, the Honda Accord-267HP, Lexus ES350-268HP.

For today's performance cars, the V-6 Mustang has 305HP, Camaro SS V8 with 426HP, the BMW M3 (gotta have this one listed) has 414HP.

Hyper performance cars have in excess of 500HP and many approach or eclipse 600HP.
Lately, we hear about excessive emissions, fuel economy requirements and such. Yet, the manufacturers continue to build some pretty powerful cars and we are all the better for it. I realize these cars represent a very small percentage of the units sold but for the horespower junkies, we have a lot of choices.

Now looking to the future, some concept cars from Ferrari and Porsche have more horsepower than ever with the advantage of Hybrid Technology. The Porsche, I was reading, will be faster than the fabled Carrera GT both in a straight line and around Nurburgring.

For the performance car lover, cars now and in the near future are just going to be unbelievable. Just like each month when I was a kid, patiently awaiting the next issue of the car mags, I cannot wait.