Remember my Corvette? The sad, 1985 grand tourer that I just couldn’t stop myself from buying last fall? If you’ve forgotten, I forgive you. For most of the winter, I forgot about this poor car, too.

With all the 1,000+ horsepower ratings permeating the pages of magazines and websites, it's easy to get complacent about achieving those lofty numbers. After all, they're seemingly so common that ...