They definitely did, at the time. They exceeded gasoline powered cars in pretty much every metric.
Then, the gasoline powered car got easier to start and operate.
But, yeah, they had plenty of torque. The Doble B did 0 to 60 in like 15 seconds. That's faster than a bunch of 80s cars.
I did not know that. I learned something today. But I guess they would have to be able to generate a lot of torque to be put into train engines
The electric starter was what killed the steam car. Until then, gasoline wasn't really all that dominant. Even though the Model T sold millions, steam cars stuck around until the 30s.
Here's another one:
It had huge torque (1,100 ft⋅lbf or 1,500 N⋅m) at zero engine revs, and could accelerate from 0 to 60 mph (0 to 97 km/h) in under 8 seconds[
To be fair, that one wasn't made until the 1970s.
You could drive that today without any problem
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