Can you feel the difference in torque?
 

I got the opportunity to test drive an ap2 yesterday and I loved it. I was wondering if somebody who has driven both could answer whether or not you could feel the difference in power. I've also read a lot of articles that say 0-60 time for an ap2 is 6.2 and ap1 is 5.5. Can anyone confirm that the ap1 is quicker to 60?

Are you drag racing from light to light? Most people will never be able to hit magazine 0-60 times in this car.

AP2s typically require 2 shifts to hit 60, whereas an AP1 requires 1.

Could I see the links to these articles you read?

AP2s have more power, more torque, and shorter gearing down low. That should tell you all you need to know.

Magazine times will vary (sometimes significantly) depending on the car, the driver, ambient conditions, and the test surface. You can't really compare different cars from different magazine tests.

Yes you can feel the difference. Main thing is the AP1's F20C needs to operate in the 6-9k rpm to be fast/make power, the F22C was designed so you can still have power at lower rpm (3-5k rpm).

i recently did an engine swap to the f22c, and yes! you can definitely feel the difference between the two engine's torque.

Quantitatively, how much difference do you feel? i.e. how much faster 0-60 is your car with the 2.2l engine? Inquiring minds want to know.

If you want to just use a completely arbitrary measurement like 0-60, I'm pretty sure the time is actually identical between the cars. That's what I remember from Car and Driver's AP2 test. The AP2 accelerates harder in each gear but requires an extra shift just before 60 MPH that negates the extra acceleration for that particular measurement.

If you measured to 55 MPH, the AP2 would be faster by a maybe 0.3 seconds (the time it takes for a brutal power shift).

The AP2 motor makes more peak horsepower than the AP1, and combined with suspension geometry improvements and fatter rubber will generally outperform the AP1 in every situation. But some people will argue that the AP1 is more fun to drive despite that.

Neither of these cars are straight-line monsters, and they CANNOT stand up to repeated hard "launches." If you're worried about a few tenths to 60 MPH or beating someone from a stoplight, this is absolutely the WRONG car for you to buy. You will lose races to Toyota Camrys and you will break something trying.

The difference is when you get to the power. CandD also compared sixth gear pulls from 30-50 and 50-70 and found the AP2/f22c 2 seconds and 1 second faster respectively than the AP1/f20. Obviously if you are looking to get going you'd downshift to get into the power band but it shows you the location and shape of the power curves between the two engines. Go look at some dyno charts for stock S2000s and you can see how they make power differently; even though the curves are similar, the f22c has more power below vtec at 6k, plus the revised other bits, that changes how it feels to drive.

One of the problems with comparing 0-60 times is that AP2s need an extra shift. Another is that stock, the OEM flywheel slips and slows drag-style shifting so you get a longer power-on delay.

I've owned both, you can definitely feel the difference in torque. The 2.2L is easier to drive around town. It pulls stronger when you're under 6,000 RPM, especially with the revised gearing of the AP2 transmission.

The 2.0L requires more attention to avoid bogging it down. But when you get it right and stay in VTEC through the gears to 9,000, the 2.0L is hard to beat.

Speed wise they're about the same.