TORQUE is all-important to the drivability of a car. if you want manic high-rev fun, you’ll get an S2000. Bags of bhp. No torque.
But if you want something that’s quick when you’re not, too, bag a Golf GTI. Decent power – but no shortage of Newton metres, either.
This was brought home by a drive in Renault’s Clio TCe. The 1.2-litre engine is lost in the bonnet, and it’s easy to miss the tiny turbo. But it’s this that turns it from languid to lugubrious.
The torque curves show why. Here, on the left, is the torque plot for the teeny 1.2. On the right is that for the teeny 1.2, plus turbo. The shape tells you what you need to know: on the left, it’s peaky. On the right, it’s flat.
For torque, peaky is bad. Flat is good. It means, with the TCE, you’ve got 135Nm NM from 1800 rpm – so it’s responsive in normal running. Has guts. At the same engine revs, the non-turbo is muscling out just 90Nm.
In other words, at the same engine speed, the TCe has 50 percent more muscle!
As most drivers both don’t like revving engines all the time, nor continually changing gear, this means that, everyday, the TCe is the more pleasant car. easier, punchier, more refined, nicer. Confirmed by a charge on the road; it’s a peach.
But this torquey profile made me realise that, actually, I could have garnered all this simply by looking at the torque curve. There was my evidence – merely confirmed by a test drive.
There’s something else, too. Weight. The Clio is a heavy car – 1080kg. So it needs a hefty slab of torque to counter this. A Peugeot 107? That’s got just 93 Nm of torque overall – but weighs just 800kg. So, doesn’t feel as torque-deficient as a Clio 1.2 non-turbo.
There’s a fair bit to all this – I’m looking forward to investigating more in the coming months.
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why does the torque curve goes downn at high rpms
It’s due to many aspects – engine efficiency, breathing capabilities and so on. Torque will always decline earlier than power, as hp is a function of torque and revs. I always look to torque as the true indicator of how ‘powerful’ an engine is…