Altima SE V-6 vs. Accord LX V-6

the accord has a 240hp 3 liter engine, the altima has an extra half liter and 10 more horses.

The interior of the Altima was updated for 2005.

I drove both of them and bought the Accord V6. The altima definitely is faster but I elected to go with the Honda for more practical reasons:

1. Better resale value
2. Better Value overall
3. Better Qulaity as borne out by JD powers and the 200 Japanese engineers sent to the stateside Nissan plant to shore up quality.

The V6 accord is a nice car that definitely will get out of its own way but it is by no means the rocket that the Altima is.

A lot more comes into play then just pure horsepower. Curb weight, overall torque/HP/RPM curves and tranny reduction ratios are three things that immediately come to mind.

I bought the Honda V6. The Nissan was one of the comparable models I was looking at.

Horsepower is not everything. The Honda falls behind primarily due to less torque. Accord has 240hp/212tq while the Altima has 250hp/249tq. Torque affects acceleration directly by the sheer ability to move mass. With 15% less torque, it should be obvious why the Altima will out accelerate the Accord. Gearing would also play a part.

That would be a judgement call on your part. The majority of cars out there have plastic and vinyl interiors, whether one looks cheaper than the other or even if that matters much is up to the consumer.

I also bought the Accord EX V6 in February. It runs on REGULAR gas, unlike the 3.5 liter Altima.

If you want a faster Accord, you need the $30,000 made-in-Japan '05 hybrid. Apparently it'll spin the wheels from a stop just fine.

JM

I also bought the Accord EX V6 in February. It runs on REGULAR gas, unlike the 3.5 liter Altima.

If you want a faster Accord, you need the $30,000 made-in-Japan '05 hybrid. Apparently it'll spin the wheels from a stop just fine.

JM

You are so wrong. Horsepower is everything. Since the Altima has a 3.5 L vs the Accord's 3.0 L, the Altima has more low end power. It would take off at the line faster. Every gear changes reduce the engine's rpm. This benefit bigger engines because they have more hp at lower rpm.

At 1000 rpm, a 4 L engine would make 2x as much torque as a 2 L engine. But, for some reason beyond my comprehension, people don't realize that it make as much as 2x the power too. Torque only twist, but power moves things.

I could make more torque > Horsepower is not everything. The Honda falls behind primarily due to less

Actually torque is much more important at the lower rpm than you seem to understand. In fact, that low end power you are thinking of is actually more torque than anything else. Torque *is* a specific measurement of the vehicle's ability to push/pull an object/weight from a stop or lower speed. You will reach the peak torque of an engine in the lower rpm range, exactly where most of your acceleration occurs, while your peak horsepower occurs in the upper rpm range, where you will accelerate slower. Don't beleive me? Look at Horsepower and Torque charts and you will see where the peaks occur.

Why does this occur? You want to drop your rpms to a point where you can take the most advantage of torque and horsepower, usually around 5200rpm, to accelerate. Not saying that horsepower does nothing, in fact it does help sustain and increase speed at the upper rpm when the vehicle is already moving. Think of horsepower as related to the top speed of the vehicle. BTW, just because an engine is bigger, doesn't mean it has more power.

Actually, just because and engine is twice the size of another doesn't mean that it is twice as powerful. Much of an engines abilitly is based on it's design. If your idea held true, all 2 liter engines would put out the same power. BTW, what do you think torque is twisting? I would say it's the axles which is connected to the wheels which moves a car forward. How does horsepower move the car?

I highly doubt you could produce more torque than the VQ35DE on your bicycle.

If you want to get a little more technical:

Sean is correct and you are incorrect. Looking at a chart to find the torque and hp peaks doesn't tell you where maximum acceleration occurs. Easy to show from Newton's second law (F=ma) that maximum acceleration occurs at the POWER peak in any gear. Sorry, but you just have to do the physics here.

Again, Sean is basically correct. The physics of combustion is a constant for all engines so maximum PRESSURE within the cylinders without detonation is basically a constant (all 2 liter engines don't put out the same power because not everyone achieves the same volumetric efficiency, designs for premium fuel etc) Torque is pressure x displacement - so yes, an engine twice the size puts out twice the torque AND hp (hence acceleration) at a given rpm - provided intake and exhaust systems give the same volumetric efficiency at that rpm. These are all basic concepts for Engine Design 101.

Frank

1. Torque, by definition, is just a term to describe the strength of the twisting motion. It has nothing to do with acceleration. Just because there are a lot of idiots, including magazine editors, miss understand the term, that does not make it right. You should replace your "torque" with "horsepower".

1. At low rpm, like 1k-3k rpm, most engine put out the same horsepower/volume. Hence, double the engine, you double the power. What differentiate a good engine from an average engine is how much power it could produce at high rpm, like above 5200. This region of rpm is where VTEC and Vanos and such enhance engine power.

2. 100 lb person on a 3' crank on a bicycle produce 300 ft*lb of torque. A 300 lb person standing on a 1' crank produce 300 ft*lb of torque. I, standing on a

4' breaker bar > Actually torque is much more important at the lower rpm than you seem to

Raybender floridly penned in news: snipped-for-privacy@sbcglobal.net:

Also do some reading:

I've wondered about torque and HP too and didn't know the answer but would like to.

As you state, F = ma (force equals mass times acceleration)

So, a = F/m (acceleration equals force divided by mass).

To accelerate the car, we need F (force).

Torque is force times distance. T = Fd

Solving for F and plugging that into our acceleration equation, we get

a = T/d/m (acceleration equals torque divided by distance divided by mass).

For your particular car, the distance and the mass don't change. Hence acceleration depends on torque only.

As the car goes faster and faster, you need horsepower to maintain that torque at the higher RPMs.

There's some interesting background at

Here's the way you need to work it out. Then to prove it, go test the acceleration of your car in second gear somewhere past the torque peak and up on the hp curve, and compare to acceleration AT THE SAME SPEED in third gear down near the peak of the torque curve.

Start from

F= ma Newtons second law

Now the car is moving as you accelerate so.....

F x velocity = mav But this is just

Power = mav, so that for the moving car we have,

acceleration = Power / (mass x speed)

This is the equation you need to work with. Now to make all the units work out correctly in the English pound - foot system, you need to express

Power = Horsepower x 550 ft-lb/sec Mass = Weight (in pounds) / (32 ft / sec^2) speed is in feet / sec acceleration will then be in feet / sec^2

Hope this helps.

Frank

You're getting things mess up.

T = Fd. F is perpendicular to d. This is a twisting motion, as in angular force. F = ma. a is linear acceleration. You can't just plug those 2 equations together and solve them. You need to deal T equation with angular acceleration, not linear. Basically, you need more equations to translate those 2.

That site sucks. First it says the Mustang engine is not good for pulling a truck because it lacks torque. Then it contradict its self by proving that the Mustang's engine could put out as much torque as the diesel engine, through the use of gear. And then it says that the Mustang's engine won't last pulling a truck.

If the author had a bit of brain cell, he would forget his argument about torque and just conclude that the Mustang's engine could pull as well as the diesel engine, but that it won't last as long operating full time at full load at 5k rpm. It has nothing to do with torque, just pure power.

As I said before, massive recital of myth does not make it a fact.

Harry Cox wrote:

More than the Honda anyway. What was that, 214 lb/ft? ( what's a "tq" ?). Assuming the pedal on the bicycle is one foot long, which it might not be, and that I weigh 214 pounds, all I have to do is stand on the pedal.

214 lbs/ft of torque. I could get more by pulling up on the handlebar as I pressed down on the pedal. How many horespower is that? If I could pedal the bicycle at that rate for one full second it would be 214/550 = .38 hp.

Fianlly, someone who understands the difference between torque and horsepower!

I have a 2004 EX sedan with V6 and love it. The engine/transmission combo is fantastic and the suspension/handling is superb. I would not put too much stock into performance numbers unless they consistently show a major gap in performance from a number of reliable sources. The cars are very evenly matched and to obsess about a silly possible slight difference in 0 - 60 is silly. Are you expecting to get into lot of drag races with Altimas? I don't think the Altima V-6 is exactly cheap any more and I consider their rear end to be butt ugly. If performance is that important then get a new Mustang GT for around the same or less money. --- Steve