Maybe this will help some of you guys...its a better explaination:

Horsepower is related to torque, and torque is turning force. Place a lever on the engine's crankshaft and measure the twisting force produced, and you have torque. Note that time is not a factor - torque can be constant over time. Horsepower, on the other hand, is the rate at which the torque is produced.

Horsepower is a measurement of the engine's ability to do work. One horsepower can lift 33,000 pounds up one foot in one minute. Horsepower is measured over time. The more horsepower a vehicle has, the more mass it can move in the same amount of time, or it can move a fairly constant mass (the weight of the car) in less time. In simple terms, to get a vehicle accelerating quicker, we need to produce torque faster.

Like I have said, horsepower is the actual work the torque is doing. With no horsepower the engine wouldnt accelerate as fast. With no torque the car wouldnt accelerate fast. You need both torque and horespower to accerate because torque and horespower are tied together.

Horsepower is calculated from torque over time. So it is important to have torque, but it is useless if it cant be put to work...

another bit from an article:

To achieve good performance, operate the engine at its peak torque, and the lower the rpm this occurs, the stronger it will pull from a stop. I see too many "hot-rodded" engines where all they go after is maximum horsepower at high rpm. If you have a light vehicle, steep axle gearing, and are willing to constantly rev the engine high, then high horsepower numbers will make you go fast. Great for racing.

For most of use however, it is better to have an engine with higher torque ratings and the lower or broader the rpm range it achieves it the better. Torque is what gets your vehicle moving. For everyday driving, I would pick a vehicle with high torque ratings at low rpm over a high horsepower, high rpm one any time.

Want the best of both? Then consider vehicle with a supercharged or turbocharged engine. By packing more air into the engine, torque is increased dramatically, but the engine can still be built for high rpm operation. Who says you can't have your cake and eat it too. Unfortunately, cake costs money, and so do superchargers and turbo's. There is always a catch.