Turbo vs Stroker? whats better?

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It's also much easier to visualize horse power that a thousand Joule-second equivalents and is more rooted in the real world and has more tradion behind it.

I think that depends more on what you are used to. A lot of people in the US don't even know exactly how the measurement for horse power was came about.

We have to do a lot of calculations involving si and standard units in school, and really, noone except the professors who got their phd in 1960 really like dealing with standard units - tons of messy conversions that complicate your calculations when you could just use si.

Understanding how horse power is related to the power a horse can exert is one thing, but actually comparing a modern vehicle to a horse seems a little pointless. I think the boosters they use to get the space shuttle into space are rated at something like a million horse power... Maybe its just personal preference, or the preference of modern lazy college students, but I would much rather deal with kilo-watts than horse power when actually using the numbers for something. When someone asks me "what's kinda horse power does that car(Z) have?" I will of course tell them "it's SAE rated at 150," but that's just because when you are talking about cars with someone in the US they are more comfortable just hearing a horse power #.

I think perhaps the Aussies or Japanese would have just an easy time understanding a rating given in kilo-watts as we do in horse power.

This is all based on opinion, so you will probably disagree with me. I personally just wish we would start the transition to the metric system in this country, but that obviously isnt going to happen.