[Aditya]

Why we love high-revving engines

Of late, we have observed many car makers limiting the engine rpm in their cars. Many engines cut off power even before the tachometer's needle even touches the red line. Take the Skoda Octavia Mk 4 as an example. It had a lovely 2.0L TSI engine that put out 187 BHP @ 4,180-6,000 rpm and 320 Nm 1,500-3,990.rpm. However, Skoda limited the engine revs to only ~6,000 rpm, which was just where the redline started. This is disappointingly low. Even some diesels we know of, rev till 5,500 rpm.

Pros of high-revving engines

We, as petrolheads, love high-revving engines. There are some good reasons for that. Let's have a look at some of them.

• With high revs comes more power in the top-end. Power, torque and rpm are correlated and engineers have to find the right balance as per the requirement. At low revs, you have more torque from the engine, and as the revs climb, you get more power. So, if you are driving an off-roader or a people carrier, you need an engine that has more torque to accelerate quicker with load. But if you're driving on the road or a track and want to go fast, you need an engine that makes more horsepower and can sustain it. To continuously drive at high speed, the engine needs to have high revs so it produces more horsepower. Take the erstwhile Honda Civic, for instance, it had a horrible bottom end but was insanely fun to drive at high revs.



• You have more revs to play with. This means you will be able to attack a mountain road much better. For instance, you can take a fast sweeping corner in the same gear from 5,000 all the way to 6,500 rpm (or 7,000!). You don't need to upshift to keep the car in the power band.



• If you can take the engine to higher revs, it also helps while overtaking. When you're overtaking, there's a certain purity in completing your overtaking in the same gear. We don't like upshifts in the middle of an overtaking manoeuvre. The inclusion of the upshift means it takes that much more time to complete the manoeuvre.



• In the case of a car with a high-revving engine, it will allow you to downshift more aggressively as more revs are available. With a low-revving engine, the car doesn't allow aggressive downshifting. It will wait for the revs to fall to a much lower level than a high-revving engine would. Aggressive downshifting brings more engine braking as well.



• An engine that sounds awesome at 6,000 rpm will sound even better at 500 / 800 / 1,000 more revs. Most racing cars and superbike engines are high-revving units. For an enthusiast, there is nothing more thrilling than hearing one of those in full chat. Just listen to those screaming Formula 1 cars or superbikes.

Cons of high-revving engines

Like everything in this world, high-revving engines have their disadvantages as well. Here's a look at some of them.

• Lower revving motors may have access to most of their top torque nearly off idle. A higher revving motor will likely produce high torque at higher revs. In most cases, an engine optimized to run at higher revs usually suffers from a lack of power lower in the rev range, which can make it a pain to drive in everyday conditions. Lugging such an engine will also result in the wear and tear of components. Low-revving engines are more likely to have better drivability at low speeds.

• Mechanically, running at higher rpm puts more stress on most parts of the engine. Driving close to the redline for prolonged periods is more likely to wear out the engine components faster. This will result in expensive repairs.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by Aditya

However, Skoda limited the engine revs to only ~6,000 rpm, which was just where the redline started. This is disappointingly low.]

On any tachometer, be it on a car, truck, plane, ship, whatever, the redline means don't go here! So it makes sense that the limiter kicks in at the start of the redline.

On some engines, e.g. Aviation, you might have a small yellow scale before you hit red. That is a rev bandwidth which is allowed for short periods of time.

Jeroen.

[deathwalkr]

My first car was the Swift 1.3L Petrol. That little beauty used to love to be revved up beyond 6k RPM and would eagerly get there in a hurry.

Adding a CAI system also helped it "breathe" more freely.

My t-jet on the other hand hates to be revved but the power band also kicks in much lower so I shouldn't complain but something about seeing the tacho needle move hits you

[CentreOfGravity]

I can proudly say that we have a car with an insanely high revving engine, the 2022 Honda City MT. Get this - it revs all the way till 7200 rpm! Can you name any other car south of 50 lakhs which does the same?

Man, the feeling when the raw, unadulterated* VTEC engine (*read: naturally aspirated) crosses 5000 rpm and the needle of the digital tachometer races to the redline like there is no tomorrow, that's pure bliss! Most cars hit max revs before the indicated redline, but this is a rare car that revs beyond it! And damn the NVH, the aural pleasure at the top end of the rev range is to die for. Although I haven't gotten around to driving it yet (I just turned 18), I can vouch for the fact that it's loads of fun.

Although in this age, we must be thankful if a car has an engine in the first place because batteries just kicked in, yo

For some reason I have a feeling Hondas and Marutis are going to dominate this thread

[saket77]

Honda Civic, Maruti Suzuki Zen & Honda City. These are the 3 cars I have owned and driven my entire life- so you can sense that I have a thing for fast free revving engines; although 90% of the times I drive very sedately. My dad used to drive a Fiat 1100D before the Zen and even that car had a reasonably free revving engine on which I learnt driving. The 1-ltr Zen's engine is terrific in the sense that while it revs freely, it also makes great bottom end for city driving. It is a very very balanced engine & feels strong through the entire usable rev range.

[ex-innova-guy]

Great timing for this thread! Just the other day, I was red-lining my Hyryder, which has the K15C Maruti engine. There is an aggressive power cut-off just after you cross 6000 rpm. It climbs rpm quickly in the first two gears, while it takes a bit more time in the third gear. 100 kmph comes up just as you near the rev limiter in 3rd gear.

My nephews (16yo and 10yo) who used to stay in Mumbai were visiting me and wanted to go on a night drive. This was a bonus opportunity for me, as my parents couldn’t say no to it. They have always had a diesel car in their family, and their understanding of a car revving was totally different. My younger nephew was so happy when I was red-lining the car! So much so that he exclaimed that the symphony sounded like a Lamborghini As luck would have it, we got to see a real Lamborghini Urus and an Audi Q8. I was grinning the whole drive and revving the car while he was telling me the names of each passing car. It sure was fun when we were all younger.

[alpha1]

High rev engine produces high pitch.
Human beings associate heightening pitch (like voice) with excitement. The same goes for singing, music, and ... of course the engine noise.

No wonder most people get adrenaline kick just by hearing a sports car.

Now on the performance considerations - typical high revving engine produce their torque quite high up in the RPM range. This means more clutch slip (and gear shifts) required at standstill or low speed conditions (because your engine is quite ineffective at <2000 RPM). This scenario is seldom encountered in racing hence the engine is acceptable. But the owners of Honda Civic and Old(est) Honda City know the pain encountered in 0-20 kmph urban traffic (and imagine doing that on an incline!).

[museycal]

Why I love high-revving engines?

Imagine tackling an uphill ghat sections on fairly wide highways/expressways, you see a safe line-of-gaps spaced out around you such that you can see a quick dab-&-dash way out of the traffic. You drop gears, probably 4th to 3rd to 2nd and you start building speed faster as the revs climb higher. You don't need to downshift as the redline ceiling is still 1,500 rpm away, and as you overtake one car and plan for the next gap, you relieve the accelerator, no need to brake as the revs fall back down and engine braking gives you back the control for the next dash! Dab-chuck-release- repeat! And in no time, your puny 1.2L 4 cylinder car is ahead of the train of larger cars working in their forced induction 1,500 rpm - 4,000 rpm range.

All the while you listen to you engine and exhaust making some good noises! Yes I love the high revving engines anyday!

[Kosfactor]

When I started driving there was no tachometer, but I did use most of the audible spectrum of RPM, hearing the engine was important, also once warmed up the Japanese engine of Esteem was eerily quiet at idle, twisting the ignition key on an already running engine was very common.

In older vehicles without any limiter of sorts, the 4 Cyl engine starts to sound like a 2 Cylinder engine once you give it the beans and stay on it for sometime, you start to feel that its not all that nice for the engine. This is something you cannot completely eliminate with 4 Cyl I think because even ECU equipped engines too sound close to it.

But nowadays with electronics in place, they allow the engine to be utilized at its full speed without having to worry about it falling apart - So I`m okay with this limiter, it does not stop me from driving hard or enjoying the drive, even if its a hill climb, we just have to get adjusted to the way it works.

With Turbo charging (TGDI, CRDI etc), there is no need to revv so high, plenty of power is already available across the revv range, just a matter of us learning how to use it appropriately - or leave that to this other development - smart gearboxes.

With new generation gearboxes with TC, your Accelerator pedal is now gone - Its merely a go fast pedal, the computer decides how its going to pick up speed, so you are going fast without all the drama. Engine sound? what's that?

It was a bit weird at first but now got used to all this.

[GTO]

Why I love high-revving motors (petrols with 6500 - 7000+ rpm, diesels to 5000 rpm & beyond):

- Fun, fun, fun

- Wider rev range to play with

- Can hold the same gear for longer through a corner

- Low rev motors absolutely suck. I have driven diesels that struggle beyond 3500 rpm and petrols that choke beyond 5000. They are awful to drive

- More engine braking opportunities

- The sound at high-revs is music to the ears

[sjain2054]

Other than the Honda City, is there any other car out there in the market today that gives such high revving pleasure? - new or used.

I have driven the GT TSI ten years back once and have not driven any other TSI engine car other than that. I remember the GT TSI being fun because of the transmission. But are the 1.5 TSIs & 1.0 TSIs as free revving as the Honda City?

I read that the new 3XO does not rev beyond 5000rpm. Any other cars that are fun in this manner?

[t3rm1n80r]

I mostly like it because of the sound. I feel the correct type of high frequency of sound is energizing.
Check this playlist. It has excellent demonstration of firing order and how the sound changes with RPM:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL...3wBdqY4ep8JTgB

[hkborah]

I have a 2009 Accord MT
1st gear - 60-70 kmph
2nd gear - 120- and higher
……

And you can engage 5th gear around 35-40 kmph.

Highly flexible and forgiving engine that can almost let you drive at any speed in any gear.

Constantly driving at higher speeds gives 11-12 kmpl. Driven sedately with AC gives closes to 15 kmpl.

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[ByKaizen]

The tendency towards falling in love of high revving engine is we do not want to change gears frequently, the high revving engines have a huge spread of power band, as others say let us take Honda City 1.5 NA, it can do 0-150 kmph in just 1 gear (3rd) - not sure which other breed on budget can do this.

Both downshifting and upshifting with high revving engine at higher/proper RPMs are pure bliss, but again whatever we post here are pertaining to manual. Not sure if automatic will allow us to enjoy the higher RPMs (until we put it in manual mode which again is not same as pure manual drive)

[TheHelix0202]

High-revver for life. But there are just some days where I prefer the enjoyable flat torque curve of a smooth parallel twin over the boyish, zesty, maniacal nature of an orange thumper, leading me to enjoy a more relaxed ride overall -



Picture source: autoX