Wow! That's pretty crazy! They sound a lot like the Hyundai Turbo motors. An old co worker had a Veloster Turbo with custom tune and every bolt on practically and I was surprised at how low the power was compared to our cars. He was told anything above like 275-300hp would need bigger Turbo and full motor build!
On a relative side note, one of the companies that does tuning for the Abarth, also makes tunes for the Veloster Turbo, Dodge Dart, Kia Forte, etc., basically all of these "eco" hot hatches. Each one of them has a smaller motor and a smaller turbo, and each one was really not designed to operate much above stock levels of power (from everything I've read). The VT's explode if you go too far over 240whp, the Dart's transmission can't handle much more than 225wtq, the Abarth I believe is in the same boat with it's transmission (as Dodge, since Fiat owns both), and I've read they too can't go much above 260whp before needing internals, the Forte is one of the only ones I haven't read much about, but my guess is that it's going to be similar to the VT. For the most part, those companies are making the bare minimum they can get away with so that the motors last until the warranty is up, and that's about it.
I think I posted this somewhere else here recently, but I know one guy that's local that has a N/A 2.4L Dart but bought a turbo for it and had it tuned and setup by the same local tuner. Stock he was around 165whp? Something like that...now he's at 213/220 (to the wheels), and that's as far as he can go before needing to do transmission work. At that point, he might as well have spent the 18-20k (car) + 5-6k(turbo) and + 3-5k transmission rebuild on a Charger R/T and still probably had room left over to tune and do bolt ons and been lightyears above his 2.4 Dart...
The VT crowd is especially dense, they think their car stock is a "GTI killer" because they have the same amount of horsepower and are a lighter car; Hyundai however, like most manufacturers that aren't VAG, post crank numbers, so even though Hyundai claims 201hp, it's actually dyno'ing 165-175 at the wheels, whereas the GTI (specifically the MK6) was dyno'ing true to it's numbers, or sometimes even higher than claimed.
Even tuned those guys get really excited because when the tuners push the motor (dangerously high for the stock motor/turbo) and hit 275whp (give or take) - the problem is that they don't show it at the track. The tuner that hit those numbers, only managed a 13.875 @ 101...Stage 2 APR puts us at lower numbers than that, and despite being a heavier car we've had guys run 12.6 @ 107-109. No, most stage 2 guys aren't hitting those numbers, but I'm taking one of their "best" tuned and fully optimized against ours, and it's not even close, despite the numbers.
Anyways...I think I just went off in left field again, but it's definitely an interesting group of cars, and an even more interesting crowd that accompany them :lol:
I'm still waiting for a Veloster to try and race me, I never have had one try, though I have seen one that I know is tuned with FBO's and has a high number attached to it, just never seen him when there isn't traffic...
YUP.
GTI > then basically every other hatch.
The TSI is stout as fuck.
This. Very much this. I was just talking to the guys in the local Focus ST group and they want to set something up so that a couple of them can run me again. I ran a guy when I was the original APR stage 2 file, 235whp/280wtq, he was stage 3 on e30, at 280whp/360wtq, and from 55-110 I pulled 5-6 cars on him (yes, he was racing, he didn't miss a shift, though he did have some extra weight in an extra passenger and camping gear, it wasn't enough to make that much of a difference, and those are his words). Another guy just went Big turbo (he's sitting around 330whp/350wtq), raced a stage 3 e30 ST, and beat him by 3 cars...He still has room to go in his ST with the BT, but where he's at now, and considering I'm 80whp and at least 30wtq higher than where I was when I ran the other guy, I'm thinking it's not going to be pretty. No idea where their power goes, but it sure as shit isn't going to the ground...