Control of the inner engine torque of a combustion engine is very crucial for the overall performance of a dynamical combustion engine test bench. The main problem thereby is the usually unknown system behavior of the combustion engine, the time delay of the accelerator actuator which is used to control the combustion engine. In general the combustion engine is mounted on a combustion engine test bench in order to adjust the parameters of the engine control unit (ECU). Hence the system behavior can change quite fast. In this paper we will present an adaptive approach to control the combustion engine torque. Measurements on a dynamical combustion engine test bench will verify the proposed approach. Copyright © 2007 International Federation of Automatic Control All Rights Reserved.