8 Of The Highest Torque Diesel Engines Ever Made

The nomenclature of engine power can get tricky. Brake horsepower, shaft horsepower, pound-feet (lb-ft), dynamometer ratings, revolutions per minute, engine load, and temperatures all play a part in assessing an engine's capability.

Seldom has a car fan gone to check out a buddy's new car or boat without appreciatively patting it and asking how much horsepower it makes. Horsepower's ever-present companion, torque, is slightly lesser known but no less critical. Torque is a measurement of rotational force. It is usually measured in lb-ft, joules, or Newton-meters.

In most internal combustion vehicles, pistons drive a crankshaft that rotates, sending rotational energy through a transmission and down a driveshaft or into axles that spin, which turns the wheels.

Diesel engines put out much more torque than non-diesels due to several factors, including stroke (the distance a piston travels), the additional energy diesel fuel can store, the higher compression ratio diesels employ, and the use of turbochargers to supplement torque generation.

Ranging in size and application from pickup trucks to the largest semi trucks in the world to building-sized industrial behemoths, some of the most powerful engines on the planet are diesels that generate insane amounts of torque.

In honor of the inventor of the diesel engine, Dr. Rudolf Diesel, and the work accomplished by his marvelous machine, we investigate some of the highest-torque diesel engines ever made.

While the most common application for diesel engines is in pickup trucks or SUVs, many small cars also use them. These engines offer superior fuel efficiency and torque, making them a popular choice for small car manufacturers. Famous examples include the Volkswagen Golf, Mercedes-Benz 300SD, BMW 335d, the Audi A3, and many others.

The 2020 Porsche Panamera Diesel made our list of the fastest diesel-powered cars ever made thanks to some serious engineering prowess from the studs in Stuttgart. The 2020 Panamera 4S Diesel hit the market with a twin-turbo 4.0-liter diesel V8 boasting 422 hp and 627 lb-ft of torque.

If you had the right wheels, you could probably pull a stump with the thing, but you wouldn't want to. Most of us would much rather enjoy the blistering 4.5-second sprint to 62 mph or the top speed of 175 mph.

The Panamera, with its sleek and stylish design, is a testament to the fact that diesel engines are not just for ungainly work machines. This beauty on wheels is a clear indication that diesel power can also be synonymous with style, sophistication, and speed.

Audi is another company known for sophisticated street cars. It has built plenty of cars with turbo-diesel power in its TDI (turbocharged direct injection) line. Turbochargers and diesel engines go together like peanut butter and chocolate. Diesels use air compression to create torque and increase efficiency. A turbocharger force-feeds air into the ignition chamber, thereby increasing the compression ratio and producing more torque.

Like many major manufacturers, Audi uses racetracks to test and improve technology, which eventually ends up in road-going cars. After bowing out of factory racing after 2002, Audi returned with a vengeance in 2006 with a big surprise in the form of the R10 TDI LMP1. That's right, Audi became only the fourth team in history to compete in the historic 24 Hours of Le Mans Prototypes competition with a diesel-powered entrant.

The R10, powered by a 5.5-liter V12 TDI engine and equipped with a pair of Garrett turbochargers, was a force to be reckoned with. It boasted a horsepower rating between 650 and 700, a testament to its raw power. Even more impressive was its torque production, peaking at a staggering 948 lb-ft, available consistently between 3,000 and 5,000 rpm. Such was its dominance in the torque department that Audi specialists had to recalibrate the dyno the first time the R10 was tested on it.

The R10 TDI performed no less impressively on the track, ultimately earning the top spot at three consecutive Le Mans races. It also went on to win four constructors' and drivers' championships.

We've established that diesels can demand respect on the street and track. But what about the worksite? Diesel engines have a reputation for lasting forever and pulling heavy loads more than screaming around European race trucks. So, which street diesel pickup boasts the most torque these days?

One of the leading contenders is one of the most powerful pickup trucks ever built, the Ford Super Duty F-450 XLT. The 2025 model of Ford's biggest big-boy truck comes with an optional 6.7-liter Power Stroke V8 Turbo Diesel. With forged-steel pistons and a variable-geometry turbocharger, this beastly heavy-duty pickup makes 475 hp at 2,600 rpm and a whopping 1,050 lb-ft of torque at a barely above-idle 1,600 rpm. Need to pull a stump out of concrete? The F-450 might be your best bet.

A more practical application of all this torque might be hauling heavy-duty goods. The diesel gives the F-450 an 8,000-pound payload rating. The F-450 boasts a maximum capacity of up to 40,000 pounds for towing. That's 20 tons! The average towing capacity for a tractor trailer is between 30,000 and 80,000 pounds, meaning the F-450 breaches commercial hauling capability with a relatively small (wait until we get to the industrial applications) diesel V8.

With an MSRP of between $47,000 and $80,000, expect to spend in the upper range to get access to all that power if you're in the market for the F-450. 

The F-450 might brush up against greatness, but the backbone of American logistics relies on the even beefier diesels lurking under the hoods of tractor-trailer trucks. The Peterbilt Model 389 is nothing short of a legend in the trucking community. Responsible for millions of miles driven and pounds of cargo delivered, the Model 389 arrived in 2006 after replacing its predecessors, Model 379 (1986) and Model 359 (1967).

Peterbilt offers a range of engines for the Model 389, but the most impressive of them all is the Cummins X15, a powerhouse that is among the most potent engines permitted in Class 8 highway trucks. Cummins, with its long history of crafting durable and powerful engines for industrial and commercial applications, has been offering the X-series for a quarter-century, continually investing in enhancing its performance.

Ford can toss its paltry 6.7-liter displacement out the window. With 15 liters of displacement spread across six cylinders, each combustion chamber has more volume than a 2-liter soda bottle. The X15 Performance is a mammoth engine with a VGT turbocharger, helping it achieve between 525 and 565 hp and a titanic 1,650 to 2,050 lb-ft of torque. This level of power and torque allows the Model 389 to haul heavy loads up steep inclines with ease, making it a top choice for long-haul trucking.

There is a certain allure to the massive equipment found on mining sites. The sheer scale of the machinery required to dig precious resources out of the ground captures the imagination. That's why so many children grow up playing with toy trucks, and a favorite is the Caterpillar 797F mining truck.

With a rated payload of 400 tons and a gross machine weight of over a million pounds, no V8 will do for the 30-foot-tall dump truck one can find trundling around mining operations. Fortunately, Caterpillar, which makes this massive mining machine, also builds mighty diesel engines.

Within the Cat 797F is the heart of a behemoth. The C175-20 diesel engine in the engine bay is over 8 feet tall on its own and features 105.8 liters of displacement spread between 20 cylinders. With four turbochargers, the C175 makes 4,000 hp and up to 16,474 lb-ft of torque. The C175 can also make up to four megawatts of electricity when hooked up to a generator.

Though the 797F mining truck is likely its most recognizable application, the C175 also sees duty in passenger ships, offshore drilling sites, and locomotives.

Despite the impressive technical specifications of the Caterpillar C175-20, it is not the company's most powerful diesel engine. The Caterpillar 3616 exceeds its little brother as a tool for power generation, large-scale industrial projects, and marine propulsion.

With 16 cylinders arrayed in a V-configuration and a total displacement of up to 295.6 liters, the 3616 has fewer cylinders but more displacement than the C175. Liquid-cooled and turbocharged, it produces as much as 7,200 hp and 35,690 ft-lbs of torque at a rumbling 850 rpm. It can also generate up to 4,920 kW of electrical power in conjunction with a generator just in case you need to power a small town for a while.

Caterpillar sometimes struggled in developing its big-boy diesel. The conglomerate had to create all-new manufacturing processes due to a complex engine block that required special casting techniques to meet Caterpillar's stringent safety and durability requirements. We're glad the engineers figured it out, though, because the world is a better place with this grunty diesel on hand.

The roadway isn't the only place diesels shine. In the transition from steam to battery-powered locomotives, railroad locomotives spent an extended sojourn as diesel-electric haulers. While the diesel engine in a diesel-electric train generates electricity to drive motors that push the locomotive, it is still enormously powerful in its own right.

Union Pacific introduced the Centennial 6900 locomotive upon the 100th anniversary of the transcontinental railroad's completion. Primarily in service between 1969 and 1984, these impossibly heavy locomotives weighed over half a million pounds, not including any trailing cars. Such enormous weight required equally gargantuan power, and diesel came to the rescue.

The DDA40X was the largest and most powerful diesel locomotive ever built. It used two 16-cylinder General Motors 16-645E3A engines. Each of the 32 total cylinders displaced 645 cubic inches. In other words, each cylinder had more combustion volume than the F-450's entire 409-cubic-inch (6.7 liter) V8 engine. Each engine made 3,300 hp for a total of 6,600 and could propel the train up to 90 mph.

Locomotives use a measure known as tractive effort to determine power. While not identical to torque, it is a related concept that denotes the pulling power of the locomotive. Tractive effort can be converted to torque but will vary based on wheel radius and gear ratio in the locomotive, so the actual torque of these engines will vary. Rest assured, with 136,000 pounds in tractive effort, the Centennial 6900 had plenty.

The granddaddy of the diesel is the incredible Wärtsilä RT-flex96C. It is a special mission, and you can tell just by looking at it. At 44 feet tall, 90 feet long, and 2,300 tons, this diesel engine alone is taller than the Cat 797F mining truck and just 8 feet shorter than the Centennial 6900.

Developed by Finnish company Wärtsilä, this building-sized behemoth powers some of humanity's largest vehicles in oceangoing container ships. Pushing all that weight through even the strongest ocean swells requires serious power, and the RT-flex96C brings power aplenty. With up to 14 cylinders and a displacement of over 25,480 liters, the crankshaft in this mighty beast weighs 300 tons by itself.

The low-speed diesel generates up to 108,920 hp, but its torque numbers are positively staggering. It produces over 5 million lb-ft of torque, placing it among the most powerful engines ever devised by man.

The Wärtsilä RT-flex96C entered service in 2006 in the engine room of a container ship. Since then, it has plied the seas in the bellies of post-Panamax container liners, the largest class of ship companies will build before exceeding cost-effectiveness parameters. These ships are so enormous they cannot fit through the Panama Canal, meaning that the enormous engine needs to be up for some lengthy travel.