Throwback Thursday: What does Torque in a car do?

It’s one of the most bragged-about vehicle specs of any racing enthusiast. But what, exactly, does it mean?

“Understeer is when you hit the wall with the front of the car.
Oversteer is when you hit the wall with the back of the car.
Horsepower is how fast you hit the wall.
Torque is how far you take the wall after you hit it.” -Old racer’s creed

You’ve seen it a bunch of times when you’re reading the specs on a new car: the number of foot-pounds of torque that it puts out. It’s still a couple of months to the 2014 New York Auto Show, but there are always exciting new concept cars that get showcased at events like this. Every now and again, one of them will catch my eye, like this Mercedes did a few years ago.

Image credit: Mercedes-Benz E250 concept car, via http://www.carmk.net/thread-89968-1-5.html.

And in the description of its stats, along with the size and power of the engine, comes this: 369 foot-pounds of torque. (That’s 500 Newton-meters, for you mks/SI folks.) But what is torque, exactly, and what is it good for?

Torque is the amount of “turning power” you have, in the same way that you turn a wrench.