I agree with you. F1 and most forms of racing are limited by class rules. For the street we have more freedom to do it the "best" way (meaning the way we like best). With extra torque, you just go faster. No need to fine-tune gearing and driving style or spend megabucks. A high revving engine cost big bucks. A high torque engine can be very inexpensive.

There are two straightforward ways to make a lot of extra torque:

...Bigger engine
...Supercharging

Club members have spoken in favor of "big" engines like the CA18, SR20 and L20, but rarely anything bigger. I wonder how the Nissan 2.5 four would fit in - is it a light engine?

Since not many of the club members are fans of V6 or V8 powered 1200s - or in Australia, not even allowed to use big engines - that leaves supercharging (either using a supercharger or a turbocharger). The advantage of a turbo over a supercharger is you can just "turn up the boost".

If ya wanna keep an A-series motor, you're not going to make a lot of torque. So to get a lot more performance ya gotta rev it higher or used forced induction (and even turboed, it's not a lot of torque). To make it go faster with higher revs, gearing becomes really important.