I'm pretty sure Bruce knows how this works.
I believe his point is that an engine needs to make torque to make horsepower, as HP is a computation based on torque.
While this may be true, total HP numbers don't tell you all that much about how powerful an engine feels. If the torque peak doesn't occur until 6000 RPM, and the HP peak is at 8000 RPM, it's going to feel like a 2-stroke-- all soggy and soft until the engine is REALLY spinning. Johannes Persson (Sweden air-cooled deity) made some crazy amount of HP with a 1776 a few years back (250+ HP), but I think the engine redlined at something like 14,000 RPM. That's astounding as a proof of concept, but not very useful as a street engine. One would need a 1000 lb car, or a 10 speed transmission, or both to make use of that kind of power.
The dirty secret? Total torque (as a number) isn't very useful either-- because it doesn't tell you anything about how flat the torque curve is, or where the peak occurs. We need a dyno graph to see that. The sooner the peak occurs, and the longer it hangs in there, the more useful the power is. This is what most guys just call "torque", or "twist", or "pull".
But even a dyno graph doesn't tell you everything you need to know. You've got to have a good torque number to have a good HP number, and a nice flat torque peak to feel powerful-- but there's another factor that almost nobody considers, because there isn't any number for it (although a 5-60 mph time in a high gear pull comes close):
Throttle response. Throttle response makes an engine feel "snappy".
Turbochargers are almost miraculous-- modern turbo engines start producing peak torque at about 1500 RPM, and carry it through until about 5500 RPM or so. The dyno curve looks fantastic. Still, car magazines and people in general miss the feel of larger displacement, higher compression engines which make similar power. Why? Throttle response-- what happens when you romp on the fun pedal? Does the engine gather it's skirts, draw a breath, and go-- or does it go from domesticated to "hang onto anything you can find" in less time than you have to think about it.
Great progress is being made here-- with dual scroll turbos, etc. Soon, there will be electrically assisted turbos, which are more interesting to me than any other technology under development right now.
But throttle response is not a number. That is where the magic of good combinations come in. That's why I wax all lyrical about Panchitos, and why an 8:1 engine feels a lot different than a 12:1 engine. It's why a (current) turbo 4 is as fun to drive as a NA 6 (I'm looking straight at you, Porsche)-- even though the 4 has better numbers.
Numbers don't lie, but they don't tell the whole story.