torque V12
 

I have been away from the board for awhile, and i just found out that torque has gone out of business!! does anyone know what happened? those motors seemed like the answer to a lot of power problems.

I think Sterling bought the remains and are perfecting the V-12 mills for better reliability, testing currently and available within a year or so.

I had heard that Callan bought the rights.

I heard the sterling rumor too. Torque going under was rather predicatable. Those are some pretty expensive motors and they just wern't selling.

In a recent Powerboat issue, they wrote that Sterling did in fact acquire the engines and are optimizing them.

I always thought one Torque motor, one IMCO splitter and two IMCO Xtreme drives would make an outstanding, lightweight, good handling, easy around the dock, race/hi performance pleasure/poker run boat...

Where did I see something about Callan/Torque?

What I heard is that Callan actually outbid Sterling for Torque Engineering Corporation's assets and then proposed to Sterling to work in a cooperative agreement to modify the engines and try to market them more successfully. As for modifications, I believe D'Annibale declared somewhere that they are trying to simplify the engine and make it more cost-effective to make and ultimately cheaper for the consumer. The problem is that at the end of those simplifications, the consumer may end up with a cheaper product but at the expense of quality. The fact that the whole thing is gear driven should be an argument in favor of reliability if it's done right. That should be revised and made right instead of trying to do away with the system. It's a good one so if it doesn't work fix it, don't bin it. Anyway, just my opinion and guessing... I'm sure Sterling know what they're doing and anyway, it's not like they're into low budget engines to be obliged to cut costs before they market it. Any actual news on what modifications are being done?

But I'm glad this came up. I love the whole Torque idea and if this type of thing was developed and major manufacturers got into it, I don't think I would be into diesels. I always say that gas engines are not unreliable because they run on gasoline. Gasoline is great fuel but the design of traditional V8s is just too damn old to take the power and stress demands a modern powerboater has. If this type of modern technology was applied by a large manufacturer which has enough resources to fully develop the end product, gas engines would be reliable and very powerful. The new BMW M5 or the current M3 CSL engines produce over 100 hp/liter of displacement and are still good for tens of thousands of miles, even hundreds. Why not see this in boats? So respect goes out to Ray Wedel, the former president of Torque whom I had the chance to meet, and his team of engineers for trying something new and definitely going in the right direction. I also hope Sterling and Callan will succeed without watering the initial idea down too much.

just so everybody knows exactly what we're talking about, here's the Torque brochure for their naturally-aspirated engines. I hope you can magnify this and see the print when you open it...