Originally Posted by
JoshS
Actually, I didn't say torque didn't matter. Torque does matter, because it directly affects the shape of the hp curve, and that *does* matter.
What I said was that the PEAK torque doesn't matter, which is all we have. You simply can't derive anything meaningful and useful about the shape of the horsepower curve based on the two things we have available, which is peak tq @ revs and peak hp @ revs. In fact, you can draw exactly one conclusion about the HP curve: you can find a second point on it (the HP available at the torque peak) and you can plot a two-point HP curve, otherwise known as an "HP line". The slope of that line is an indication of how quickly HP falls off on the left side of the HP peak. But you know nothing about how quickly HP falls off on the right side of the HP peak.
I plotted these "HP lines" for lots of cars in the ITCS and found very little correlation between their slopes and what cars the world thinks of as "torquey". I concluded that the peak torque number can not be used to derive any meaningful conclusions about appropriate weights.
I have the paper on my computer at home, I can repost it this weekend.