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Power To Weight Ratio

The term power-to-weight ratio refers to how much power a car has relative to its weight.

This is one of the better ways of measuring the performance potential of a car, and is a much better way of comparing one car to another instead of simply considering power alone.

The reason for this is simple – the lighter the car, the less energy that’s required to move it. Consider the below example:

Alfa Romeo 4C
BMW X3

The two cars both have a similar amount of power, but the X3 SUV is much heavier than the lightweight 4C so takes 40% longer to hit 100km/h.

Limitations

Two cars may have an identical power-to-weight ratio but that doesn’t mean that they will have identical performance.

There are a number of other factors that impact a car’s performance as well, power-to-weight ratio simply serves as a good starting point for your performance comparison.

Discover

We would recommend around 150hp per tonne as a good starting point for a reasonably quick car.

Explore by using the Power to Weight filter in the Power & Speed section of our advanced search by tapping the button below.