Are smaller turbo engines better?

so frod and g.m. lie bigger than kia and hyundai? how is this news???

"Many, especially those smaller 1.4- and 1.6-liter engines, still downshift frequently to keep up with traffic." that's where the owners of manual cars learn how [un]polished their gearbox is.

"In contrast, BMW's turbocharged four-cylinder engines seem to deliver both good fuel economy and acceleration:" translation: luxury automakers got to do it right or get clobbered by competition. Given how competent Caddy ATS chassis is once engine gets the same love and attention the rest of the car got that bmw four banger will have an industrial strength test in the american market.

It's not the concept. It's the idiots who were tasked to implement it. To run a parallel look the manual shifting qualities in the Fit and it's "competitors". It's the same 5 speed concept. Very different implementation.

Sooooo, I could expect a lot of used cruzes with 1.4Turbo that can be had for reasonable money a few years from now?

bob urz wrote in news:kgk045$esu$ snipped-for-privacy@speranza.aioe.org:

They don't have to do anything except make EPA and CAFE bureaucrats happy.

Not surprising; when you're trying to force a smaller engine to deliver the power of a bigger one when it is required to move the vehicle in a normal manner is not going to work well.

Now when we're talking about performance cars, where you're never running at or near full throttle in normal driving, then yes, you can see increased economy with a smaller turbo engine.

Or in short, the average car is just too big and heavy to get good economy in any case.

nate

This reminds me of years ago when there were some diesels on the market in a few small cars and trucks. People kept ooo'ing and ah'ing about their great gas mileage and wanted to know why no one could produce a gasoline engine version that got such good mileage. But they completely ignored the fact that the diesel versions did 0-60 in

In message , Ashton Crusher writes

I would doubt that you could get the mpg of a diesel from a petrol engine, a good diesel might give you as much as 38% efficiency but a petrol will struggle to give you 30%. Remember that the Carnot cycle sets the maximum in theory as 50% with no losses and I know of no-one that's made a lossless engine at any time.

No, I think the issue is just simple mass, and power-to-weight ratio. The diesel/gas thing is a different issue; Diesels are inherently more efficient than gasoline engines. Now it's possible to get excellent highway economy out of a big, heavy car but it's darn near impossible to do so in stop and go city traffic. The only real practical solution to that is either make the car lighter, or go hybrid (and develop more energy-dense batteries)

nate