Low speed torque and driveability ?

66fs said
Funny, to me driveability is not a factor of torque at all. I have run as an A-Body "daily driver" a 4 speed 170 cu in slant six & 4 speed, stock 273 Commando & 4 speed, 273 Commando with 1.88 J heads & 4 speed, 71 340 & 4 speed, and a factory 383 & automatic. Almost all had 3.23 gears and factory manifolds and the best factory exhaust. All were quite driveable. The small blocks were very similar, the 170 was nice and had a nice rpm range, and the 383 easily an very fast. I loved them all. Probably the least driveable was the 273 with the 1.88 J heads, which was my favorite combination. It revved so quick, it was a pain to drive in town. So for me torque has little to do with driveability. I don't see the point of spinning tires for very long or pulling the front tires off the ground on the street. I am sure driveability Does vary a great deal from person to person.

It just seem the premise is if you lose too much low speed torque from cams, cr, single plane, big heads, the consensus seems it's gonna hurt driveability from losing torque. Which don't make sense to me for one like you said /6, small cid V8 already have a lack of torque, they don't need a 3500 rpm stall to get moving.

Plus we drive around at part throttle which is just a fraction of the power available at any given rpm, so if we generally don't need all the power available to us how is a little less gonna effect it when your not using it anyways.

When it come to cams I think were talking overlap. When it's comes to single planes, carbs, heads were talking probably velocity.