about selecting the right engine for my car...

[Canadian Normandy]

im sure that this has been asked here before, but the answers seem to get a bit more technical than my layman brain can handle.
im picking out an engine for my project car, a Tempest Magnum, and there are several V8 OHV options for this car. general consensus seems to be that the 2 carb supercharged is the best one, but the HEMi seems to have more HP. i noted that the 2 carb supercharged has more torque though.

so i tried looking up the effects of torque vs hp, and the technical explanations seem to boil down to "torque is raw power, hp is how quickly the engine applies said power"

so to further boil this down to actual in-game effects within the limitations of the game's driving engine, if i understand it correctly torque will affect the car's early acceleration and likelihood of spinning out at start while horsepower will more affect the max speed and late acceleration? do i have that simplified correctly?

[Mardoin69]

Yes.
Now to compensate for said spinning out off the line, you can modify gear ratios and be sure to use 'Slicks' for your rear tires--'Racing' tires for front end if you want a 'little' better steering control. --Also, need to turn down Steering sensitivity cuz this games driving mechanics are wonky--it's set way too high at 100%--I turn mine down to 40%.

Also, the devs didn't put this line into the car config files but, some cars absolutely 'need' it. It's called 'Downforce' and basically means air pressure will push the car downward the faster you go thus creating a little more traction. It goes under the heading: [1 Other] and should look something like this;

[1_other]
allowedPlaces=Order.2,Junkyard,Auction,Shed
cx=0.31
doorAngle=70
downforce=0.5
...
...etc. etc. etc....

That number can be changed up to a higher one to help increase traction control. FIRST use alll other methods to get best traction. Then if still having issue with spin outs, increase downforce a little and test... increase till just barely having some spin off at launch of car / switch to 2nd gear. You don't want too much downforce cuz that will also slow the car down a 'little' bit the higher you go. It'll also create tire scrub if suspension is bottoming out and fender wells scrub tires--you can actually hear this in the game.

I've never had to increase downforce to anything above 1.5 and ones that I did that, I slightly increased suspension stiffness to compensate. That's another code line you can add into the cars config file: frontStiffness=__ and rearStiffness=__ which will go under the [2_suspension] section.

I add those lines into all my car configs and start them at 0.5. Then increase it a bit while testing till I get just enough stiffness to keep from having tire scrub. Again, most I've had to go up to on that is 1.25