Nothing wrong with plenty of torque, in fact it's ideal on the road, and very useful on the track. The Nord engine is surprisingly torquey actually, soon after I bought my first one I would occasionally accidentally shift to 4th instead of 2nd, and it had no problem pulling the gear.
And as for the narrow power band, I'd have said a GenIII V8 is peakier than the Nord by a long shot. It's a great peak, just takes forever to get there...
Definately nothing wrong with plenty of low down torque, issue is when youve got an engine that runs out of breath at about 5000 rpm. The VN V6 has bags of low down grunt but top end wallop it hasnt. The two engines that in this 90 are chalk and cheese (Alfa 2.5 and VN 3.8
When the Gen 3 V8 came out a lot of people who were used to the old injected 5 litre didnt like the lack of initial response of the Gen 3, even though once you get it going past 4000 rpm it flies. The old engine felt quicker, gruntier - initially.......
As for the nord it is suprisingly torquey for a twin cam 4 potter engine especially if you compare it to some japenese hi po twin cam fours. The fiat twin cam is another.
Both have great throttle response and part throttle accelaration but still have decent top end mumbo. I can easily take off in 2nd in my 1600 Junior effortlessly.
Interesting to see how this 90 goes like, would pull hard from down low, and do great burnouts.
The handling would be interesting as i doubt its 50 50 now.
The sound is a big negative, now sounds like a kitchen aid as opposed to a mechanical masterpiece