CarThrottle Asks: What's Your Favorite Power-Adder?

We're all a power-obsessed bunch here.  Admit it.  You love it. Cars aren't fun unless they can make the scenery blur.  I mean, otherwise you'd be reading MiniVanSlidingDoor. But you're not.  So when it comes to power, enough is never enough, and too much is getting there.  Here's the question, then - what's your favorite way to get it?

There are a lot of answers to this question.  The first, and in the opinion of many domestic fans, is "a great honkin' huge engine."  Put more eloquently, there's no replacement for displacement.  Ask any Camaro owner - if 305 cubic inches is good, then 350 cubic inches is better!  Why else does GM Performance Parts sell a 572 cubic inch crate V8 engine?   If you want to make more power, the easiest way is to cram more air and fuel into the engine.  The easiest way to do that is to have more engine.  Best examples of this: A regular 'Vette has a 6.2L V8.  A Z06 'Vette has a 7.0L engine.  It's better, full stop.

But of course it's not the only answer.  You've also got turbocharger and superchargers, which are similar in theory and different in execution.  Both compress air to above-ambient levels (that'd be 14.7psi, by the way) and cram it down the intake, effectively putting more oxygen in the same space.  More oxygen = larger explosion.  Larger explosion inevitably leads to more power.  A supercharger is a compressor driven directly off the crankshaft, and a turbocharger is the same thing only it scavanges all that wasted exhaust gas to drive a compressor.

Superchargers and Turbochargers have been around for ages, though.  The hot thing these days is variable this and variable that.  Honda introduced the idea of variable valve timing and lift (VTEC!!) in the early 90's, which is sort of like having two different cams in your car at the same time.  Reach a preset RPM over a certain throttle position, a hydraulic solenoid shoves the double-ground cam over to the crazy side, and your mild-mannered Honda four-cylinder goes from Jekyll to Hyde in one screaming second.  Many manufacturers are also using variable-length intake manifolds, which are shorter at low RPMS for good torque output, and adjust out longer at high RPM's for better top-end breathing.

And let's not forget about chemical horspower, either.  Nitrous Oxide (or as the chavs/ricers in their dodgy cars like to call it, NOS!) is sprayed into the intake manifold to artificially increase the oxygen content of the incoming air, which if you've been following, equals more power. Water/methanol injection is popular on turbocharged cars, known as the "chemical intercooler."  It lowers intake air-temperatures (which are abnormally high on turbo cars since compressed air is, by nature, hotter than ambient air), which increases oxygen content, which... you get the point.  Some of the diesel-tuning guys are injecting Propane into their motors, which I'm not even going to pretend I understand the reasoning behind.  I'm guessing more power is a safe bet.

So, pick your poison.  Me personally, I'm a turbo kind of guy.  If you find me on an online forum I usually go by the name Mr bOOst, which is a reference to "boost" - pressure above atmospheric.  I love forced induction of all sorts, but the something-for-nothing nature of turbos, as well as their split personality, appeals to me.  While a supercharger is always on (and thus creates almost totally linear responses), a turbocharger is only creating boost under heavier throttle openings when enough exhaust gas is going through it.  The exponential rush a turbocharger delivers is an absolute riot to me; plus you get all the benefits without the terrible gas mileage of a supercharged engine.  The solution to that is an electric blower clutch (like Mercedes-Benz and Toyota use on their supercharged motors), but if we're nit-picking, supercharger whine gets on my nerves.  How about you?