The high-revving (9000RPM) F20C1 Inline-4 from the Honda S2000 has a peak piston speed that matches the highest-revving F1 engines at 25 m/s. The BMW S54B32 Inline-6 from the E46 M3 nearly matches the naturally-aspirated efficiency of F1 engines, at 14.3 bar mean-effective pressure (MEP).
We can also thank F1 and similar racing series for composite cylinder liners, titanium valve springs, hydraulically actuated cams (e.g. BMW's Double-VANOS), hydraulically actuated clutches (e.g. BMW's Sequential Manual Gearbox), dual-clutch transmissions (e.g. Audi and BMW Dual-Sequential Gearboxes), ceramic-composite brake rotors (e.g. Porsche PCCB), direct port fuel injection, etc.
This is also one of the big losses we every-day drivers will suffer as a result of BMW, Honda, Toyota, etc., abandoning the sport.
I've been to one F1 race, sitting at turn 1 in Shanghai. There was a TV helicopter maybe 50 meters over our heads -- and its noise was completely drowned out by the cars' engines.
Any F1 fans should download the UK Top Gear season 15 episode 5 and watch the last 15 minutes - a short tribute to Ayrton Senna. It's tremendous.
Around that period they had the central display at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. Clearly their engine management shop had been bored one day, because they'd written a test programme which enabled them to play tunes on the engine just by revving it, and were showing off for the assembled crowds. It's honestly that fast revving and high pitched that it could do a pretty decent job.
I'm fairly sure I've seen all the cars they had in the advert running in person. What it's really lacking is the physicality, unsurprisingly; the pops and cracks of the overrun, the way the howl of even the older engines just reverberates and I think must have some key harmonics that are out of the range this reproduces, the guttural roar of the engine at low (for it) revs just shaking the world as it brings everything together.
Think of the difference between an orchestral recording and hearing the orchestra in person. Now give it the power of Metallica in concert. Welcome to live F1 engines.
Other early very high power engines:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novi_engine - 1941 450bhp to 1966 840bhp, equally unsuccessful
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_W125 - 1937 600bhp, championship winner
Much of the core technology isn't that different, significantly because they first restricted and then effectively froze development a few years ago, but the engines aren't 3l V10s any more but 2.4l V8s.
In the time of the 3l V10s, from memory they peaked at over 900bhp. For a while they were revving to about 19,000, but as the materials science for this got increasingly complex they restricted it to about 17,000 on cost grounds - after all there's no real sporting value to everyone spending an extra $50m to get to exactly the same relative performances with little noticeable difference in outcomes.
The 2.4l V8s were about 750ish from memory when they came in; I've not heard more recent figures but due to development restrictions I doubt they're much different. The other interesting technology now is the extra hybrid power source and the large kick that can offer; interestingly it was very nearly raced (in a different form) by McLaren in 1998, though a late rule change that was suspected to be at the behest of another team banned it.
Otherwise - the core reason the engines are recognisable is that they're required in the rules to be so. Turbos were restricted then banned in 1998 after, at the design peak in 1986, reaching 1500bhp from 1.5l engines. They're quite likely to be back in a few years though, albeit in a very different form to their mid-80s incarnation. Turbines - what I suspect we'd actually be running otherwise, although indirectly as electric generators for capacitor packs - were banned even earlier. I don't think Wankel engines have ever been legal in F1. Diesel definitely isn't.
When we say recognisable though, I'm not sure people realise just how alien these engines are within the limits of a piston engine. They barely do anything below what would be red-line revs for a road car and generate almost no power until they're past 12-13,000RPM. Piston speeds are firmly supersonic and the elasticity of the metal needs to be factored in, yet I read once that the pistons were getting so close to the tops of the cylinder heads in combustion that there was a visible ring of clear metal in the combustion deposits because there wasn't space there for the deposits to form. The real shock though is the noise; we're all used to what a road performance engine sounds like, but a 17,000RPM V8 (and even more so a 19,000RPM V10) howls and screams like no road engine you'll ever hear, bike included. Animalistic, harsh, edgy and the sort of sound that lives with you; TV doesn't come close to capturing it.