Car horsepower and torque with RPM

Question

I’m looking at two cars and even after having googled I’m still not really wrapping my head around this:

Horsepower (Net @ RPM)

Car 1: 208 @ 5700

Car 2:194 @ 6000

Torque (Net @ RPM)

Car 1:163 @ 5200

Car 2: 139 @ 4400

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1. Car 1 seems to have higher HP, but how does the RPM come into play? Is it better to have less RPM? Like car1 doesnt need to exert itself (in terms of RPM) to reach a higher HP than car2?
2. Car 1 has more torque, which is ‘the ability to do work.’ This sounds like a good thing but how does the RPM come into play?

Would car 1 be considered more powerful than car 2?

In: 0

Answer 1

Power is speed times torque.

Think of a bicycle. Pedal fast and hard for power. Fast and easy or hard and slow mean you should shift gears.