You gotta admit 1500 or so bhp out of a Renault 5 sized engine is pretty impressive . Even the wife put down her maggy and looked at her shopping car with renewed interest .
The blocks BMW were using in their Turbo F1 cars were basically the same as you'll find in that gutless wonder the 318/518. In fact, they favoured second hand blocks for F1 because they were stronger, having been thermally cycled so many times, all the stresses in the block were gone. They took the stroke right down to make it rev to 11K+, and got 1,300 BHP out of them running "qualifying" boost (5.5 BAR - 80PSI FFS!

).
It wasn't the sort of engine you'd want on a wet roudabout, though. power went from 400 BHP to 800 BHP in the space of 1,000 RPM.
Just shows how conservatively rated car engines are - or how much power you can get out of them if they've only got to last one flying lap. Then again, all parts other than the block would have been pretty exotic to achieve that.
Kevin