Quote:
Originally Posted by Nevermore
I don't have a problem with the car's power, it's the most powerful car I've driven/owned so it's plenty for me. Though I am kind of curious about the torque number, purely from an observation standpoint. I've noticed older cars, with smaller engines/less HP with more torque than our cars. I've seen some where the torque and HP numbers were the same, and some where the torque number was higher. I'm a pretty big noob when it comes to engines, but I've always wonder why our 200HP engine had such "low" torque by comparison.
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Generally, large engines have more torque, small engines have less torque (I'm ignoring forced induction here, since it complicates matters significantly). The FA20 is a pretty small engine. Horsepower on the other hand is a combination of torque and rpm - if two engines make the same torque, but one makes it at 3500rpm and one at 7k, the one that makes it at 7k will have twice the horsepower. The FA20 revs fairly high, so it makes a fair amount of horsepower despite the low torque. You'll notice that most of the highest-performance naturally aspirated engines are similar - the Porsche 911 GT3 for example makes 475hp from a 3.8L engine that revs to 9krpm. However, it only makes 325 pound feet (if I remember right) of torque.
Older engines were less efficient and unable to rev quite as high, so to make the same amount of power, they were larger and torqueier.