I'm getting pretty weary with all the hubbub about which stock HP to use when classing a car, and what subjective evaluation to apply to that HP to properly class the car. It got me thinking again - could a formula work?

I'm an engineer, and if I've learned anything in the last 40 years it's that physics is pretty darn predictable. I don't know much about what does and what doesn't make HP, but there are a lot of you out there that do. I'm totally convinced that given enough information about the design of an engine, a good engineer could calcuate its potential HP in IT trim within a pretty tight tolerance - maybe 1 or 2 percent? If that's the case, it seems like a much better approach than guessing how much gain a particular model would achieve over stock HP.

If you could set a formula for engine HP, I'm confident you could also do it for all the other adders and subtractors. Ideally we'd end up with a published formula that anyone could use to calculate the weight of any car of interest.

So, you gearheads and mechanical engineers out there, how say you?
  • Is it possible to accurately calculate the HP potential of an engine from publicly known design information? If not, can you cite examples?
  • Is it feasible to perform this calculation for the full set of IT cars?
  • Is it feasible to calculate the other adders and subtractors of interest?
  • If all this is feasible, would it be a better system than using stock published HP?