SA embracing 'downsized' engines

Downsized engines, such as Ford's 1-litre Ecoboost shown here, are becoming a success story in South Africa.

Downsized engines, such as Ford's 1-litre Ecoboost shown here, are becoming a success story in South Africa.

Published Sep 23, 2015

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Johannesburg - Specific power, more commonly known as kilowatts or horsepower per litre of engine displacement, has long been regarded as a benchmark in engine sophistication.

Squeezing abundant power from a small engine is not exactly new. Even as far back as the 1950s, Alfa Romeo's advanced-for-the-time twin cam engines were producing far more punch than their cubic capacity would have suggested, ditto for Toyota with its 1.6-litre 4AGE of the 1980s and Honda's VTEC of the '90s.

Yet it's only in recent times that really small engines with rather decent outputs have been taking off on the sales charts, notable examples being the duty-free Ford Fiesta 1-litre three-cylinder Ecoboost turbopetrol and its Ecosport crossover cousin as well as VW's latest 1.2-litre TSI Polos and Opel's Corsa 1.0T. Consider that Ford's latest 1-litre produces 92kW, about the same as the previous generation Focus's 1.8-litre normally aspirated engine could muster and not far off, for that matter, from the 103kW produced by Ford's 3-litre V6 models of the 1980s.

But has the downsizing trend really caught on across the board? According to new data released by Lightstone Auto, it certainly has.

Right now the average passenger car in South Africa produces 69.5 kW per litre, up from 61.7 kW/l in 2010, 53.3 kW/l in 2000 and 39.5 kW/l in 1987, which is as far back as the study goes.

With governments around the world pressurising car companies to reduce the fuel appetite of the cars they produce, internal combustion engines are set to keep getting smaller as the modern, down-sized turbo motors are able to ace the unrealistic laboratory tests that determine the taxation while still providing the kind of punchy performance that customers desire in real world conditions, albeit with much higher fuel consumption than the 'official' figures promise. These modern turbo motors are also known for being particularly torquey.

Lightstone's research also covered efficiency, with the “weighted” average fuel consumption of passenger vehicles having fallen to 5.86 litres per 100km in August 2015, from 7.19 l/100km in 2006. The fuel consumption of light commercial vehicles decreased from 10.3 to 8.42 l/100km over the same period.

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