The infamous Golf may be able to put out 1,200 horsepower. Possibly. The story that comes from Hans Dahlback, the owner of Dahlback Racing and the mastermind behind these insane cars, is that the car, when running on a dyno that bolts to the hubs, produced well over 850 hp to the wheels at around 8,000 rpm before the dyno started reading errors–and the car revs to upward of 11,000 rpm. Using a 15 percent drivetrain-loss calculation, at 8,000 rpm the car was over 1,000 flywheel horsepower. I’m making an educated guess that the car produced another few ponies in the 3,000 rpm that followed.
Yeah, it’s not making 1600 hp.
But it is much closer to making 1600 hp than your buick is to the 15’s…