What are you people on about, limits of FWD. I've seen and driven plenty of FWD cars with over 300. Traction was only an issue if you really jumped on it, as it is with a RWD also. 4x4 I'll give ya. I'm just tired of all this sh*t about too much mpower for a front drive, BULL sh*t, just learn how to drive one.
It's not a 'matter of opinion' - mine or anyone else's - it's a simple matter of physics:
When you brake hard load is transferred forwards onto the front axle, which increases the load on the front wheels. Up to the point of skidding, this increases the braking effect on the front wheels; once the wheels have lost grip the extra load causes skidding, until the cause (excessive braking &/or cornering) is removed. Meanwhile the back end goes light, which is why, in a corner the car can go into oversteer.
The opposite is true when you accelerate hard, load is transferred backwards onto the rear axle, which
increases traction, so the rear wheels have more traction, up to the point that they skid. In a straight line, with rwd, this may just cause 'snaking'; on a corner, especially in slippery conditions, it causes oversteer. Meanwhile, the front end goes light, so the front wheels have less grip.
If you don't believe this, you only have to watch a drag car - or any car for that matter - accelerating away from the line on a drag strip!
As a result of this immutable fact, if the front wheels are the driven wheels they lose grip much more quickly than driven rear wheels - so fwd cars start spinning their front wheels (i.e. losing traction) under hard acceleration far sooner than rwd cars do. Once they have lost traction, the coefficient of sliding friction being far lower than the coefficient of static friction, it much more difficult to regain grip.
Of course, a 4x4 transfers drive from wheels that are begining to slip, to wheels that still have traction, so despite greater friction losses in the drive train they can use more of their power to accelerate.
The limits traction are affected by a whole range of variables: the power reaching the wheels; the weight of the vehicle; the size & adhesion of the tyres; the grip of the road surface; the suspension set-up (which was why the rwd Capri, with it's beam rear axle & leaf spring suspension couldn't make the most of its rwd) etc.
If fwd was as effective at getting power onto the road as rwd, F1 cars would use it. The fact is that it isn't. You also need to take into consideration the fact that it is easier to have larger tyres to handle enormous power, if you don't have to steer the wheels - which is why dragsters have huge rear tyres and tiny little ones - and why some powerful sports cars & some Calibras have fatter wheels on the back, but never more than 8-8 1/2" wheels on the front.
What the 'limit' is will vary according to the combination of variables, but fwd will invariably reach these limits under acceleration before rwd. I don't know exactly what the 'sensible' limit for fwd is, but I reckon that Vx didn't get it far wrong when they realised that the over 200bhp of the Turbo needed 4x4.
From my experience in Kingsley's Courtney 3.0L conversion Calibra I guess that 240-250bhp is probably about the 'sensible' limit for fwd in the Calibra. However, even I acknowledge that 'probably the best Calibra in the world' (Frank's 3.2L supercharged 'Beast') produced well over 300bhp (& at the end, with nitrous, around 500bhp) & still was a fabulous car. Despite that, the simple fact was that fwd limited the extent to which Frank could realistically use all that power & made driving it a much more skilled exercise.
