 re. litre --> h.p conversion
i have learned a ton from this thread!
the question i can answer is about the horsepower to litres conversion--they are measurements of differant things, and there is a corolation (though not a direct one) between the two.
Litres is a measurement of cubic displacement--how 'big' the engine is--it is the same as a measurement of of cubic inches (e.g. 289, 318, 350, 460 etc.) it is a measurement of how much liquid it would take (theoretically) to fill all of the cylinders completely, if all of them were all the way open at once. these numbers can be converted directly.
be warned: we americans are an inexact lot, and so very often the numbers associated with the engine aren't the exact displacement. (e.g. the chevy 454 and the buick (?) 455 were built on the same block (same displacement) but were otherwise differant, hence slightly differant numbers to avoid confusion. (sort of)
Horsepower is a measure of how powerfull an engine is. i forget the exact formula but it has something to do with the ability to move a certain weight a certain distance in a certain amout of time. I am SURE someone out there will fill in this blank.
this is why the there is only a rough coorolation between h.p. and displacement. the size of the cylander is only one factor in how powerful an engine is.
for example, my mother--the geriatric speed-demon--just bought a new Honda S2000 roadster. her little blue car (stock) squeezes 240 horsepower out of a four cilynder engine with less than 2 litres of displacement (no typo: 240 from 1.99l in 4)
by comparison, that's more than twice the horse-power-per-cubic-inch of the hottest stock corvette 454's
I will let someone more qualified than myself talk about torque.
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