Question

How does torque differ from horsepower?

Answer 1

"Horsepower is measured at higher RPM’s and torque is the low-end RPM pulling power of an engine"

Explanation:

Above quote is from: http://www.badasscars.com/index.cfm/page/ptype=product/product_id=117/category_id=13/mode=prod/prd117.htm

So to explain this, the horsepower is related to the top speed of the car, the more horsepower you have the faster you can go.

Torque on the other hand is related to getting the car started and driving it below a certain RPM, so it is directly related to the acceleration of the vehicle i.e the power.

For example a truck that pulls heavy loads needs a lot of torque and not a lot of horsepower to start the vehicle moving. Remove the trailer of the truck and the truck can accelerate fairly quickly, however it doesn't have a high top speed, due to low horsepower.

Hope I helped :)