horsepower vs torque: whats the difference?

horse power sells cars,....torque wins races....

** wow the thumbs down...3 of them, thats three people who are idiots....***

Torque is what measured as the engines and transmissions ability to effectively move your car. You say your car 170ft./lbs torque. What thats tell you is your engine/trans can move 170lbs of your car, 1 ft in 1 second. Not alot if you think about it.

Horsepower is just that, the raw output of the engine. 1 horse can pull 1000lbs 1 ft in 1 second. So you have 235 horsepower. So technically you have 235 horses under your hood :-)

But an engine can never fully utilize the maximum horsepower. The internal combustion engine is only about 10% efficient at using the power that is supplied to it, the rest is wasted energy and heat.

Torque is an expression of twisting effort about an axis, as in a lever and a weight at the end, while Horsepower is an expression of work over a period of time.

A good saying I have heard for years is, Horsepower is how hard you hit that wall, Torque is how far you plan on moving that wall. Answer, the Horsepower is only half your equation. Example, 90 mile per hour tractor trailers dont have a lot of horsepower, but have insane amounts or torque to get it to that speed. Another example is if a truck that has 175 HP and 500lbs of TQ can pull a 10,000 pound trailer, but a truck with 500HP and 175lbs of TQ isn't pulling that trailer anywhere.

Horsepower is torque multiplied by RPM. With a big gearbox, you can get as much torque as you want -- but the more you get, the slower things will turn for a particular horsepower. Horsepower is the more interesting number; that's the one that will help you pass another vehicle on the freeway.

Horsepower: A unit of power, used in stating the power required to drive machinery.

Torque: Turning or twisting force such as the force imparted on the drive line by the engine.

torque is the force you feel when you take off from a stop and it pushes you into your seat when you floor the accelerator, it's what causes the tires to spin, it's what you need for the street when going between red lights trying to beat another car, horsepower is for top speed.

Since your obviously looking for a speeder let me sum it up real easy like

Torque- Take off

Horsepower- Top end

Theres more to it than that such as torque also dictates how quickly your able to shift but since we're all being narrowminded that should do yah.

torque is the twisting force developed by the engine.

horse power is the amount of work that the engine can perform. there is an actual mathematical equation to determine one if you do not have it but you have the other. i do not have it right in front of me.

torque is what gets you going, or to pull something. makes the car go from a dead stop to whatever speed you desire with momentum.

it is also there for when you want to accelerate heavily.

and with horse power, that one kind of eludes me, but it is more of how much power you have as you are rolling along, that's my guess

horsepower is distance over power and time

torque is twisting force of your engine..

torque is the power giver, more twist and turning.. more acceleration