GB:

"Those Escorts you mention Joe, they couldn't keep up with a certain MAN artic of year 1986 vintage, either acceleration or top end, thankfully...and i shall say no more about that..:-)"

Well, you had to learn which battles were worth fighting :)

And, for a regular old bill (I became a specialist CID) it was a bit like a dog chasing a car. What are you going to do if you catch it? Thankfully many HGV drivers showed me plating certs and stuff in return for a signature on the tacho disc!

i have found some Diesels to be little better, having no useable power below turbo spool up revs ie roughly 1800 rpm, frustating drives.

There's still no substitute for capacity - I drive a 2.2 tonne SUV with a 3.0 turbo-diesel - it'll go weeks without the tachometer exceeding 2,000 rpm - it'll sit at 1,200 rpm in 8th towing a 1.5 tonne caravan at 50 mph although I do just go for a hooligan drive occasionally!

My son's previous Vectra-C Estate and present Octavia Estates both have 2.0 150 PS engines - I wouldn't want to go down on capacity from there.

so what does BHP mean ? It's really torque x engine-speed.
That engine speed component means that the max BHP (the figure that's always quoted) is towards the very top end of the rev-range. Few people drive their car at that engine speed, with their foot on the floor - and any turbo fully spooled up.
So a 100 BHP engine may be almost identical to a 125 BHP engine of the same capacity - except at the very top end. It might even be preferable at lower revs.

I've said before that I wish engine manufacturers would quote figures that were more usable, I'd like to see a power band quoted where the engine produces withing 15percent (or some quoted figure) of max torque from engine speed x to y. Further, I'd like this quoted in 'octaves', absolute revs is not that useful either. - I could understand a musical instrument that had 3 octaves and each note of reasonably equal volume, I really wouldn't want to find any duff notes moving up the scale - but some engines are just like that. Using this, a diesel would be about an octave of very loud bass notes, whereas a Honda Civic type R would have a full 3 octaves, not quite as load as the turbo-diesel, but capable of some very good tunes !!

Yes it's far more useful to have a look at the comparative torque curves which are usually available on the web somewhere.

A pretty drawing on the internet can be made up so why bother searching. What matters is how it drives and getting a good test drive over roads you are familiar with for at least 2 hours will tell you all you need to know.

An example. The wife fancied a Polo TSi 3 years ago and the 90 PS 1.2 was being very well received by the mags, decent power and a very good spread of torque. We did not expect the performance of the 1.4 TSi 140 Leon we had but we expected it to be way better than the 80 PS 1.2 Nissan Micra she had at the time. How wrong could we be, it was dreadfull, when we got back in the Micra it felt like a racing car. We ran away form the Polo.

Move on 3 years and we tried a Fabia with the new 1.0 110 PS TSi engine. It drove better than we expected and we have ordered one.

As I said above GET A TEST DRIVE.

After more than two decades flogging motors and having driven everything from 750 Pandas to supercars I enjoy nothing more than a good lightweight supermini with modest power but good nimble handling, soft ride and feelsome steering, add in a slick gearchange and it’s B road nirvana. A car is only really fun close to its limit and today’s modern high powered hot hatches and execs can’t be driven even close on the road. Fiesta/Puma, Pug 106/205/306, Suzuki Swift, Rover Metro K series, Citroen AX/Saxo all a joy to drive despite tiny power output and simple running gear. Not easy to replicate these days sadly.

Yep, I enjoy driving cars like that too - in the modern era Daihatsu were the closest to those mentioned - light as a crisp packet and decent engines.- sadly Toyota have decided to pull the plug on European Daihatsu imports.