Whether you’re reading about V8 pickups or electric sedans, the concept of torque is critical to understanding the capabilities of a car. Torque often takes a back seat to horsepower when it comes to performance metrics, but it can tell you a lot about how a car will feel in the real world. So what is it and why does it matter? Let’s dive in.

Torque

Simply put, torque is a measurement of force being used to rotate something. Whenever you turn a knob or screwdriver, you’re applying torque. Your typical physics teacher will probably demonstrate the concept with some sort of simple lever, but this is Autoblog, not West Crestfield Senior High, so we’re going to stick with vehicular examples. The best way to easily visualize torque is not with engine components, but with something slightly more car-adjacent: a lug wrench. 

Torque is a measurement of an amount of force being applied over a given distance. That’s why automotive engine torque is expressed in pound-feet; you’re applying a force (in pounds) over a distance (in feet). That’s the exact same thing you’re doing when you stick a box wrench on a nut and crank it. The wrench doesn’t make you any stronger; it just multiplies the work you were already doing.

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Let’s say you get a flat tire. Your emergency kit consists of a (properly inflated) spare tire, a jack and a lug wrench with a 12-inch handle. You line up the jack at the proper point and you’re ready to loosen those lug nuts before you put the wheel in the air, but when you stick the lug wrench on and give it a good, assertive yank, nothing happens. Uh-oh. Not enough torque.

Since we know what torque is, maybe we can work out a solution. There are only two components to this fancy math problem: force and distance. If we make one bigger, we’ll get more torque. That means we either need somebody stronger to yank on the wrench, or we need one with a longer handle.

Since you’re still not speaking to Dwayne Johnson (He knows what he did), your best option is a bigger wrench. But unless you conveniently ran over that machine screw in an auto parts store parking lot, chances are you won’t be able to make that happen. But if you’re lucky, maybe you have a length of pipe you can slip over the wrench handle to make it longer. Since your wrench handle is a foot long, the math here is easy: a two-foot pipe will give you twice the torque. Three feet? Three times. Et cetera, et cetera.

Horsepower

Now that you understand torque, understanding the difference between it and horsepower is much easier. Torque is that’s a very simple “can it be done?” formula. You need to move something that requires X force and you have Y foot-pounds to apply. If Y is greater than or equal to X, you can move it. Problem solved. Simple math.

Horsepower is math too, albeit slightly more complicated. That’s because horsepower cares about the rate at which you accomplish work, not just whether you can accomplish it. If torque is the answer to “can it be done?” then horsepower is the answer to “how fast can you do it?”

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To calculate horsepower, you multiply torque (in pound-feet) by speed (in RPM, in the case of a car) and divide the total by 5,252. Why 5,252? Because it’s a mathematical constant, as in “why are you constantly asking us questions we don’t feel like answering?” 

Let’s revisit our flat tire scenario. What happens if you don’t have something to make the wrench handle longer? You may be able to find other ways to apply force to the end of the handle. Like, by hitting it with a hammer, for instance.

Like the wrench, the hammer itself doesn’t actually make you stronger, but it allows you to more efficiently apply momentary force on the end of the wrench handle. But one hit may not be enough. You may have to hit it again and again and again to work the nut loose enough that you can use the wrench to finish the job.

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Your hammer strategy didn’t apply as much torque as you would have by using a longer wrench, so it took a little longer. The rate at which you accomplished the work decreased, but you eventually got it done. This is the same basic premise behind a handheld impact gun. You’re delivering quick, powerful bursts of torque over and over again to incrementally apply leverage. 

If you had a large enough impact gun, you could use it to turn the crankshaft on your car and move it down the road, but even a hypothetical monster impact gun isn’t going to be able to move a many-thousand-pound car very quickly. It has the torque to get it going, in other words, but it lacks the horsepower to make that happen quickly. 

Fundamentally, this is how an internal combustion engine works, only you have multiple wrenches (your connecting rods) applying torque to your nut (the crankshaft) thousands of times per minute. And to take that analogy further, the crankshaft in turn (sorry) becomes a giant wrench that you’re using to turn your flywheel.

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The flywheel is where an engine’s torque output is measured. Every part of your powertrain downstream of the crankshaft is just another wrench turning yet another component, and using this analogy, your transmission is basically a box of differently sized wrenches, allowing you to choose the best one for the job you’re trying to perform — hence the advantages of modern 10-speed automatics. 

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So which is better? 

There’s a saying in racing: to finish first, you must first finish. Torque is the “can it be done?” figure, so it stands to reason that it’s the most critical measurement of an engine’s potential. But if you’re in a race — whether wheel-to-wheel or against the clock — “how quickly?” is an incredibly relevant question. Neither torque nor horsepower tells the whole story. Look no further than the Jeep Wrangler Rubicon 392 for a perfect illustration of the fact that there are numerous factors at play, such as tire choice, aerodynamics, suspension design, and (arguably most critically) gearing. But that’s a topic for another time. 

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Traffic crawls on Interstate 93 headed south out of in Boston, Wednesday, July 3, 2024, as people make their way out of the city.  (Getty Images)

NEW YORK — High fuel costs and the threat of a hurricane are not expected to dampen Americans’ desire to hit the road this summer, with vacationers preparing for record travel to kick off Fourth of July holiday festivities.

Motorist group AAA expects a record of almost 71 million people to travel around the Independence Day holiday, growth similar to a pre-pandemic trajectory.

Some 60 million people will drive with nearly 6 million flying to their destinations, while around 4.6 million people will take buses, trains or cruises during the holiday period, according to AAA’s forecast.

“We’ve never seen numbers like this,” AAA spokesperson Andrew Gross said. “2024’s travel seems to be what 2020 would have been, had it not been for the pandemic,” he added.

U.S. summer travel will be closely watched from multiple fronts this year, as it could offer central bank officials and policymakers an important measure of consumer sentiment in an election year.

Inflation was unchanged in May even as consumer spending rose, boosting hopes that the U.S. Federal Reserve might be able to control inflation while avoiding a recession.

Gasoline prices have eased over the past few months, with the national average price for a gallon of motor fuel at $3.50 on Tuesday, a 3-cent decline from last year. Domestic airfare is 2% cheaper than last year, with an average domestic round trip costing $800, according to AAA booking data.

‘Wanting to travel’

Despite recent declines, fuel prices remain well above historical levels. The average price for a gallon of gasoline was $2.74 during the July Fourth week in 2019, and the weekly average price from 2015 through 2019 was under $2.50 a gallon, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data.

Still, vacationers’ travel plans are largely unaffected by higher prices this year, according to a survey of over 1,000 people by auto retail group American Trucks.

Four-week average U.S. gasoline demand hit a one-year high of 9.2 million barrels per day (bpd) last week as retailers stockpiled ahead of the holiday, EIA data showed on Wednesday. Four-week average jet fuel demand was at 1.7 million bpd, identical to a seven-month high hit earlier in June.

“What we have noticed is that it’s more about the rate of change than the price itself that affects the psyche of consumers,” said John LaForge, head of real asset strategy at Wells Fargo Investment Institute.

Since the price of gasoline has not moved dramatically higher or lower in the past six months, consumer psyche is largely unaffected by it, LaForge said.

For now, U.S. vacation travel is unlikely to be affected by Hurricane Beryl, which has brought devastation to some Caribbean Islands since Monday, but is expected to weaken considerably as it reaches Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula by Thursday night.

U.S. fuel inventories are also better stocked than they have been in recent years, providing motorists a buffer from sudden price shocks in case the hurricane disrupts refining operations.

U.S. gasoline stockpiles stood at around 231.7 million barrels in the week ended June 28, 5.6% higher than the same time last year, EIA data showed. Jet fuel stocks were 4.7% higher than last year.

“Americans are optimistic and wanting to travel, there’s no denying it,” GasBuddy analyst Patrick De Haan said.