Petrolheads love for high-revving engines: Sharing their pros & cons

I can proudly say that we have a car with an insanely high-revving engine, the 2022 Honda City MT.

BHPian Aditya recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

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.

Here's what GTO had to say on the matter:

Why I love high-revving motors (petrol 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 diesel that struggles beyond 3500 rpm and petrol that chokes beyond 5000. They are awful to drive
• More engine braking opportunities
• The sound at high revs is music to the ears

Here's what BHPian Jeroen had to say on the matter:

On any tachometer, be it on a car, truck, plane, ship, or 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.

Here's what BHPian CentreOfGravity had to say on the matter:

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 to 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

Here's what BHPian ex-innova-guy had to say on the matter:

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 km/h 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 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.

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