Read an article in R&T or it could have been C&T... either way it was this month's magazine, that talked about lifting the 286 HP ban officially in Japan....

This was broken by the RL, and will be broken next by Lexus with the RX430, and then again by Toyota with the next gen supra (500HP and based on their formula 1 roots) and again by an updated RX7...

It mentioned that although it has been broken, all advertising was set at the 286 limit... the article spoke about the impending HP war that is about to begin in Japan... if anyone can get the scan, I would appreciate it!

 

holy fuck. Is this is true, then there will be WAR against the Euro super-sedans.!!!!

 

It was never a "ban". It was a more of a gentlement's agreement among the car companies.

If anything, they agreed to forget the agreement, not lift a ban. Either way, Japanese companies have been sending cars overseas with more than 286-hp for some time now. For instance, the LS400 had 290-hp, followed by the LS430 with 300-hp.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that the Nissan CIMA (Infiniti Q45) did it before the RL with the 340HP V8.

 

Maybe we will start getting some Type-R's again!

Here come the posts talking about the 2009 TL-R with AWD and 900HP.

 

Correct. It was an agreement that has been thrown aside for years now.

 

From reading the article, it sounded more formal than just an "agreement". I'll try to find the text and paste here. It also states that yes, cars have been breaking this barrier for years, but this is the first time (especially in advertising) that the manufacturers have blatently broken that number.

 

This is old news, it was late this summer when they did it, NOT "years ago" as previously stated, and lest we not forget, it was only for JDM cars. While this affected some USDM counterparts, it did not prevent things like the previously mentioned 340hp Q45 (in the US I mean)

 

That'll be more a function of Tom Elliot (American Honda) retiring than Honda's "violation" of the gentleman's agreement. It was his decision to go with the RSX FP and Civic Si (current) rather than import the DC5-R and EM-R.

 

The limit was 276 hp. It had to do with advertising agreements. Many cars, including the Supra, Evo, Sti, etc., were greatly underrated to meet with these agreements. This agreement was officially broke by Honda in October when it released the new Legend(RL in US) at 300 hp. They were the first to do so. Since then, other manufacturers plan to introduce cars with +276 hp for Japan. There was a small article about it in the January issue of Car and Driver.

 

yes it also said that the 276 agreement was only present in japan they just heavily underated the cars thats why you still saw +276 hp cars here in america