日本車280匹馬力上限

In the early 1990s, that's the golden era of Japanese sports cars -- Nissan R32/33 Skyline GT-R, Fairlady 300ZX, Toyota JZA80 Supra, Soarer, Mazda FD RX7, Mitsubishi 3000GT, and Honda NSX. These cars were easily affordable given that Japan's economies was at its best moment at that time. Usually the sales of high performance or exotic sports car is a good indicator of how good the country's economy is.

The reasons for the 276 hp (or 280 ps, just different unit of measure) cap Gentlemen's Agreement in Japan are:

1, Eliminate horsepower war -- Manufacturers in the industry understood that it's unhealthy for the competition in general and to spend too much money trying to outdone one another on the engine output. Sooner or later they will run out of technology in too short a period of time. Plus still sports car, compares to other mass produces family sedan, is just a smaller, niche market that didn't make too much of net profit, so why spend all the money on something that doesn't make too much of a business sense? On top of that, it's politically incorrect to have sports car in excess of 300 hp in a country with speed limit of 100km/h, which leads to reason # 2......

2, Avoid government intervention -- It's easier to make the engine more powerful than to tune the chassis to become more capable, not to mention about how difficult it is to improve the drivers' skill. Japan's traffic accident involving sports cars (especially turbocharged cars) just jumped significantly. General publics and politicians started to point their fingers toward manufacturers creating these high horsepower sports car monsters. In order not to be the one standing out, they all agree to publish their numbers not higher than 276 hp. It's something like the German manufacturers did to their cars to set the speed limit to 250 km/h when a lot of them can go well over that.

2007-05-03 05:33:14 補充：
The Japanese domestic Gentlemen's agreement does not apply to limited production vehicle, and was lifted last year with Toyota/Lexus vehicles' with the 306 hp 2GR-FSE engine equipped, e.g. IS350.

因為日本汽車技術不斷提高 , 汽車馬力太大 , 不時發生嚴重交通意外 , 政府為了控制意外的發生 , 起初政府並沒有立例 , 各車廠來個君子協定 , 以280匹馬力為上限 , 後來政府才立例 , 現時已解除此限制

故好多日本車都不止280匹 , 閒閒地3,400匹
如WRX , EVO , GTR , FAIRLADY , NSX

因為日本車電腦相當先進, 政府如果唔立法, 車廠一定無止境令汽車突破上限, 好似 "WRX" 同埋 "EVO", 2000cc已經可以有 280 匹輸出, 仲係 Officeal 資料, 因為之前報紙講過, 佢地做測試, 單係 "EVO" (好似係VII), 實際輸出已過 300 匹, GT-R R-34 仲超過 340 匹~

不過其實唔係全部都定左 280 匹, 280 匹上限好似只適用於 "跑房車", 其他車好似豪華房車 (一般係 3000cc 以上), 好多都過 280 匹, 如果係吉普車, 閒閒地 400 幾 500 匹

因為各車廠覺得馬力太大好易發生意外
所以佢地自發地張280匹馬力定為上限
後來政府至立法張280匹馬力定為上限