Originally Posted by CRX_stg3
That makes things a little more clear. So on a lighter car, the chassis would most likely buckle from the force being exerted on it if it had rediculously high torque.
Yes or no.
If you have a crazy light car made out of exotic materials that are able to withstand the forces exerted on it by a drivetrain which produces a high amount of torque, then no.
What that post means is that if you take the same amount of force and apply it to two objects of different mass, the object with the smaller mass will accelerate more.
Torque exists in an engine at all rpm. But since a car spins its wheels and thereby the engine, the engine needs to keep spinning with the wheels. That's why your car has a transmission with more than one forward gear, so the engine which has a limited range of operating speeds can work over a much larger range of operating speeds of the wheels.
To accelerate a car that is already moving, you have to continue to apply force to it. If no force is applied to an object that is in motion, it will remain at a constant speed. So to have a car which can accelerate for any extended distance, you need to have an engine which produces torque over a broad range of engine speeds.
If you had a car which produced a massive amount of torque at low rpm but not much at high rpm and wasn't able to spin very fast, you would just get a big initial surge of acceleration and then it would stop accelerating.
The key is that for a good 1/4 mile time or whatever it is you're measuring, you need to keep applying a net force over the entire distance being traveled.