Some near comparisns of Bugatti Veyron engine

• 1,000 horsepower is equivalent to roughly 2.6 billion joules per hour. A gallon (3.8 liters) of gasoline contains 132 million joules, so a 1,000-hp engine has to be able to burn just over 20 gallons of gasoline per hour.
• However, car engines are only about one-quarter efficient — three quarters of the gasoline’s energy escapes as heat rather than as power to the wheels. So the engine actually has to be able to burn at least 80 gallons per hour, or 1.33 gallons (5 liters) per minute.
• Let’s convert over to metric. Gasoline requires about 14.7 kilograms of air to burn 1 kilogram of gas. Air weighs 1.222 kilograms per cubic meter at sea level. A gallon of gasoline weighs 2.84 kilograms. So the engine has to be able to process 2.84*1.33*14.7 kilograms of air per minute, or roughly 45 cubic meters of air per minute. That’s 45,000 liters of air per minute.
• If a V-8 engine is turning at 6,000 rpm, it can inhale a total of 24,000 cylinders’ full of air per minute. If it needs to inhale 45,000 liters of air per minute, it works out to roughly 2 liters per cylinder-full. That’s a 16-liter engine.