Sleepre52, unless you are taking this thing to the drag strip and want to win an all out race than you should forget horsepower. Horsepower should mean nothing for a relatively heavy street vehicle like the CX-5. Horsepower is overrated and grossly misunderstood.
I see this old misconception quite often on internet forums (and hear it repeated in real life by well-meaning but unknowledgeable persons). The misconception has it's origins in the fact that muscle cars historically had only 3 gears and first gear was very tall by modern standards. People would put on race cams, bigger carbs, etc. They would gain top end HP but lose HP in the lower rpm range (commonly referred to as "torque"). And their car would lose a lot of speed off the line due to the tall gearing of 1st gear.
Its so true when they say horsepower sells and torque moves cars. If you want it to feel more peppy and have more off the line snap than what you really want is more torque and specifically more low end torque.
That's one way to skin a cat. But, if you look at the problem of "off the line snap" you will see that it comes down to one thing and only one thing (ignoring the issue of tire traction which becomes more problematic as you move up the performance scale). That one thing is called torque
but it is NOT engine torque, it's wheel torque. And the quickest way to get more wheel torque is to have a shorter 1st gear. Modern cars, with their 4,5,6, and even 8 speed transmissions have much lower 1st gears than cars of the past. That's what makes torque at the drive wheels. Torque is simply HP x gearing. And, yes, HP does matter. Engine torque is a completely different beast. Engine torque is simply a convenient way to specify how much HP an engine is producing at a given RPM. Engine torque is, at it's essence, HP divided by rpm. But it is all just HP looked at in a different way (taking RPM into consideration). An engine considered "high torque" can produce more HP at a lower RPM than an engine considered low torque. As long as both engines have a broad spread of power and suitable gearing there will not be much difference in performance (assuming they have comparable breadth to their HP curves and similar HP through the curve, even though it happens at different RPM's). Performance does not care how fast the engine is spinning. My Ducati motorcycles have a broad spread of power (from 4500 rpm to 10,000 rpm. and they have six speed transmissions to make the most of it. There are modern HD's that make the same peak engine torque but they feel slow and gutless in comparison (because both bikes have suitable gearing but the Ducati makes more HP over a wider rev range). It's about torque to the pavement, engine torque is just an esoteric number when you can have any gearing you want.
Don't believe me than compare the Mazda diesel engine with the same horsepower to Mazda s gasoline equivalent. They are both about equal in an all out race but if you drive them side by side the diesel feels much more alive.
That's simply because the diesel makes more HP over a wider range of rpm's. Call it torque if you like but what really matters is the breadth of the hp rpm range of an engine and peak torque numbers are not a very good way to specify this (look at the Ducati/HD example above). Some engines simply have their torque band higher in the rpm range (and that torque band can be just as broad as an engine with more torque). As long as the vehicle is appropriately geared the torque to the pavement will be the same. And torque to the pavement is what does the work (not peak engine torque). Fortunately, even the little 2.0L CX-5 engine has a very broad spread of HP in it's RPM range and, below 2000 rpm, there is still an "eco range" that produces efficient power for those times when it is just necessary to maintain speed and the vehicle is not going fast enough to need a lot of power to overcome large aerodynamic force (parasitic drag). Traditional engines are very inefficient when asked to produce only 5-10% of their peak power.
