So...................will they admit actual real hp or numbers for insurance.........
To the best of my knowledge, the "understating" of horsepower numbers, these days anyway, is not done for insurance reason, but rather PR reasons. There were a few well documented cases where car companies did not deliver advertised power levels, and in both cases, the consumer backlash was huge, as were the repair bills to fix the problems.
Mazda had to offer buybacks on one car, and Ford had to spend millions refitting some Cobras with a different intake and exhaust. Both innocent mistakes, really, the power numbers that were advertised were taken from early testing, and then changes were made, but nobody updated the numbers. Now that consumers have easy access to dynos, and the web to compare notes, this sort of thing can blow up in your face pretty easy.
Back when folks were first discovering that the SRT-4s generally speaking, delivered the factory rated crank power at the wheels, there was much hulaballo. Cant recall if it was a chat session or the one talk I had with an SRT engineer, but the reason the team gave us then made sense.
Rather than face a PR debacle of such proportions, SRT decide to take no chances at all. So while other makers, and even normal models within Chrysler, used "standard day", meaning average conditions of say 70 degrees, and average humidity and sea level atmospherics to "test for score", SRT went high and right.
Crappiest 91 octane pump fuel they could get, temps like Death Valley, altitudes like Denver, worst case scenario. That way, no customer would ever see power levels less than advertised. This effect is more noticeable on turbo cars, since it can control the boost to vary power levels more widely.
