why not much bump in Torque?

[Marv S]

My thoughts are that '89 concept car was in such an early stage of development that the #'s were just guesses and not based on any actual engine dyno #'s. At that date there wasn't even a Viper V-10 motor to dyno. The concept was to take the V-10 that was still being developed for the new Ram Trucks and modify it for the Viper. The early test mule viper only had a V-8

STOCK PRODUCTION h/p numbers reflect a progressive increase of power as the motor evolves.

400 to 415 to 450 to 460... on to Chapter 3.....

 

[Supercharged Vipermad]

The simple answer -- torque is primarily a function of engine size, and the engine size for the Viper has remained essentially the same for Gen I/II/III. HP is a primarily a function of engine size AND breathing efficiency at high RPM. The Gen II engines breath better at high RPMs, thus more HP. the Gen III engines are a bit larger and presumably breath a bit better still at high RPM, thus still more HP.

 

[Roland L-Ocala FL]

I believe that there are essentially two ways to make torque from an engine:
1) High rpms (small block engines develop their max torque at higher rpms)
2) Longer stroke engines (Big block engines develop more torque at lower rpms because they have a longer stroke)
You can add horsepower to an engine easier than torque, but the horsepower will make the torque "kick-in" sooner and it can be engineered to stay at higher values throughout a wider band of engine rpms. As the engineers have continuously bumped up the horsepower, they have expanded the torque capability of the Viper engine to cover even more of the rpm bandwidth. That is exactly what you want in the Viper engine, useable torque at most all rpm ranges the car will operate under. The Viper engine is a "tweener" in that it falls between the small block and big block, so we get the best of both worlds, small block rpms that come on very quickly, and lots of big block low end torque!