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Wow, some very heated talk on engines! As a Detroit large engine lover, one thing no one has mentioned is transmissions or gearing. My old Camaro went like a raped ape from zero to 60 when I had 411 gears in it. After doing that hundreds of times, they finally went to shit & I put 355 gears in. Slower zero to 60 but way more top end (like an 18 year old needed that). You can make a V8 go balls out QUICK or very FAST but it's tough to do both really well. Same for "little engines".
Transmission gearings & shift points will also dramatically affect performance. The drive train is a combination of strenghts & weaknesses of all three components.
As for the 4 vs 8 talk, my feeling has always been...any configuration you can do with a four cylinder would perform far better if you did the same thing to a V-8. Adding turbochargers, nitrous, superchargers, etc might make a 4 faster or quicker, but they will do the same thing in a bigger manner with an 8. You can't beat size!
My stomach turns when I get next to some of these dinky cars with the loud exhaust...you can look at the hood & tell nothing more than a 4 cylinder lives under the hood, and my Dakota pickup can outrun most of them. Most sound like sick duck calls...
In the end, there is always someone out there with something bigger & faster. Fun toys to play with, anyway...
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