quench vs no quench?

quench is good.

as far as preferring hp over torque, to each his own

i can tell you on my 400 cheap bb build i have 450 ft lbs from 3500 all the way to 6000

that's a nice powerband

you could make a small high revvin motor, with some good power band from 6000 to 7500 or something but you kinda need to decide what you want. not as much fun on the street. it's more for all out racing. bb thumper motors with lots of torque are fun. i guess on a motorcycle the high revs / high rpm is fun, they get there so fast because of their light weight.

i know hp wins races but that comes with high rpms and a price... you need to do the maintenance. all the winning teams spend their off time checking all the parts over. runnin 8, 9, 10 grand rpms. some disassemble the engines every week.

it's all what you want out of your car. more important than torque vs. hp by the way is rod/stroke ratio. my little 400 has a 1.88 r/s ratio. should be plenty powerful for me and last a long time. having a low rod/stroke ratio introduces harmonics at tdc that are bad, and at higher rpms it's bad squared. there is lots of theory involved
http://ftlracing.com/rsratio.htm