"While some people prefer energy efficient cars, other drivers are more concerned that their car have a powerful engine. Almost 14% of the cars we service have an eight-cylinder V engine, more commonly known as a V8. V8 engines are more powerful than the four and six cylinder engines found in more than two thirds of the cars we service."
This stands out as filler written by someone who doesn't speak English or Car.
If you look how articles move on hnranking, some move more naturally than others.
This story in particular has a couple of very large boosts: http://hnrankings.info/11469285/
"The car is at the very center of many Americans [sic] lives. It can be a necessity, passion and a way to establish identity. As the number of car choices has increased, the car makeup of American cities have [sic] become vastly different. People in the Midwest are more likely to choose powerful American cars, while people on the coast are more likely to go for foreign, energy efficiency [sic] ones. Increased choice has unveiled the distinct character of American automotive desires."
It reads like a by-the-numbers high school essay. Tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, tell them what you told them. Sprinkle in outright errors, failures of parallelism, passive voice, and wordiness (...are more likely to...are more likely to...).
The rote approach combined with the anodyne results put this reader to sleep.
(I, for one, appreciated the extra clarification. If the article had just said, "14% of cars we service have a V8" it would have been accessible to a far narrower audience.)
I know more than a smidgen about cars, but I appreciated the explanation. Presumably, OP believes that I must not know a true smidgen about cars.
Two counterpoints though:
1. I posit (without evidence, because I'm lazy) that most people who buy "fast" new cars are more concerned about image than the actual performance specifications. For example, I suspect that the vast majority of original owners of Corvettes never take their cars to the racetrack. And in terms of image, number of cylinders and liters of engine displacement are much higher priority than dyno readouts.
2. More combustion chambers in an engine = higher power, higher manufacturing cost, and lower fuel economy. If you have less than $2000 to spend on a car, and you spend it on a 1980's V8, it's probably going to be slower than a three-cylinder 1.0L 2016 Ford Focus. But it's still probably the fastest option in your price range, so it's a good representation of how much you value performance in the car you choose to buy.
You can have a six cylinder with more power than a V8. And that was before a few big technologies went mainstream: Turbocharging and direct injection.
Now you have Ford shipping a V6 as their main truck engine in their F150 because it is turbocharged and direct injected. Both of these technologies allow smaller engines to produce more horsepower and torque without the need for additional displacement and cylinders.
Ford's V6 with these two technologies is not only more powerful than a lot of current-generation V8s, but it is way more powerful than a lot of V8s used to be.
Even before these fancy new technologies, I used to drive an Acura with 200+ hp from a 2.0 liter 4 cylinder engine.
The amount of cylinders is pretty good short-hand for how much gas an engine will roughly use, but it's a less useful guide to how powerful an engine is anymore.
And with more and more cars gaining electric motors to augment gas engines, things are changing even more.
> V8 engines are more powerful than the four and six cylinder engines found in more than two thirds of the cars we service
This is also poorly written and not even necessarily correct. Modern V6 engines and Turbo 4s can be more powerful than older V8s.
Re-write:
About 14% of vehicles we service are powered by V8 engines with two banks of four cylinders in a V arrangement.