The downsizing disaster discussion
Downsizing is inevitable in 2018; PH reflects on or two of its less successful previous attempts
The Peel P50 recently tested by Autocar has a 49cc engine, but that's OK too because the P50 is so small you don't so much get in it as wear it.
What's annoying is the car that promises a lot but delivers little. Dressing disasters up as good ideas is an art form in which the auto industry used to excel. A while back Autocar famously ran a picture of the then-new Range Rover Sport being towed off the test track. Turned out it wasn't a breakdown at all, though. In fact, according to an LR spokesman, it was "the Sport's towhook being tested". See what they did there?
In the industry's defence, most of motoring's major letdowns - Ford Edsel, Chevrolet Corvair, Jaguar Polecat (you may have missed that one) - are long since forgotten. There have been more recent ones though. Like the Alfa Romeo 166 Ti.
The key-tosser's motives were soon revealed. As the tossee, I found it difficult to detect much difference between the Ti's 'standing still' and 'going along' modes. Even with one's big toe firmly embedded in the carpet, the Alfa struggled to shake off a pizza delivery moped, a well-driven double-decker bus and an OAP on a circus unicycle.
Only by peering under the Alfa's bonnet did I discover the awful truth. Not the 'awesome' (to quote Alfa's website at the time) majesty of the 243hp 3.2-litre V6. Not even the 'mighty' vision of the 223hp 3.0-litre. No, this dandied-up mountebank featured the 'unique' disappointment of the 152hp 2.0. It was hard to imagine how a dealer test drive of any 2.0 166 Ti would convert into a sale, even to the most masochistic company car tax dodger.
That mechanic might have been impressed by the Alfa 166 Ti. Generally though, it's not a good idea to put a titchy engine in a big vehicle. I could easily be persuaded to eat a blue loaf, or even to drink bacon-flavoured milk, but I'd never buy a small-engined big car.
A big-engined small car, now that's different. Who wouldn't pay £45k or more for a 444hp RS4-engined Audi A1? How much would you pay for a 500hp Aston V8-engined Fiesta, a 600hp AMG S 63-powered A-Class Merc, or an Alfa Mito (yes, they still sell them) with a 700hp Ferrari 488 GTO lump shoved up its miniskirt? Soon, if the market continues in the way it's going, we may have the chance to test out this sort of proposition.
I mean for example for a daily driver a V6 1.8 making 160hp would be great in a <1200Kg car... That would be a sub 7s car.
The owner said that it got nowhere near the mpg it was supposed to - likely because you had to work it's socks off to actually get anywhere. See also the PSA 1.6 hdi for another feckless engine bolted into vehicles far larger than it should be.
A bigger understressed engine will generally be nicer to use, in many cases slurp less juice in the real world and probably be a damn sight more durable and robust than the little strimmer motors people seem to opt for.
None of the above applies to a small, light car, where a small revvy engine can be fun. However modern cars are getting fatter and heavier all the time - so that category is getting smaller all the time.
Rant over! =)
More to do with the 1.6 petrol having a fair bit more power (for the time) and not being on WOT whenever any acceleration was needed.
Do the modern small turbos run stoic when cruising, but on boost?
But, small cars with small engines are bloody great fun. My 107 is a fantastic car, like a go kart. The Corolla I have with a 1.3 litre engine does move fairly well too (better than the 3008 actually). I can't wait to put a 1.8 lump in it one day.
More to do with the 1.6 petrol having a fair bit more power (for the time) and not being on WOT whenever any acceleration was needed.
Do the modern small turbos run stoic when cruising, but on boost?
Those Vauxhall 1.6 engines were quite pleasant things to rev and having had to manhandle a GM engine (for a Locost) I'm amazed how much lighter it is than the equivalent Fords.
It isn't even a new phenomenon. It was about a decade ago now when I had to use a 2 litre Golf GT TDi for most of a fortnight while my car was being fettled and I discovered a horrible thing to drive with a binary throttle (choice of on-boost or frankly nothing) which genuinely used more fuel doing the same basic urban pootling about than a 3.6 litre 996 GT3. And the tractor mafia were proclaiming that Golf to supposedly be a decent car at the time - I dread to think what a cooking spec one would have been like (almost certainly worst than the last diesel I drove, which was a 1.6 Astra with a hopelessly compromised drive train).
The short version though is that IMHO surely they should be building cars to real world standards and only putting small power plants into cars than don't actually weigh very much?
Those Vauxhall 1.6 engines were quite pleasant things to rev and having had to manhandle a GM engine (for a Locost) I'm amazed how much lighter it is than the equivalent Fords.
* and tight Yorkshiremen
I have no doubt some of these small engines can and will hit the 60/70/80 mpg figures in a lab or on a 'real world' test route where the roads are free of traffic/hills/roundabouts/junctions/overtaking/stop-start queues/ stuff that most cars actually contend with. So a considerable number of engines are jolly efficient in terms of power and fuel use when used within particular conditions but utterly pants when asked to operate outside of that window.
Then the regulators get shirty when some boffins at VW decided to adopt a more creative approach....
(I'm not condoning it by the way - just pointing out that if you ask engineers to solve a puzzle where the rules are set by people who have no clue - then the solutions that come back might not be to their liking.)
Big claim there in the standfirst...and a particularly wrong, outdated one as well. We covered the topic of downsizing twelve months ago;
http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/b8b29879#/b8b2...
And the general consensus then was it was the wrong direction - hence Toyota's 'upsized' TNGA engine, VW's 1.5 Evo lump...and a plethora of less stressed, marginally bigger units. The switch toward RDE and WLTP testing methods toward the end of last year should ultimately kill off any notion that a downsized engine is a good thing, as they are more representative of how a car is actual used over a typical drive cycle.
- Mods - as always, feel free to delete the mag link if it's against house rules.
Petrol | Diesel | |
---|---|---|
Small car | 40mpg | 55mpg |
Medium car | 35mpg | 45mpg |
Large car | 30mpg | 40mpg |
Large 4x4 | 19mpg | 30mpg |
Obviously this varies a bit but having driven quite a lot of different cars ranging from incredibly slow to rather fast the above always seems to be about right.
Cars don't need much power to reach 30mph (in theory 30mph requires about a quarter the horsepower of motorway driving).
In case you have missed it, the next gen of passenger cars are going to be 'downsized' to zero cc !!!
(because they will all be electric......)
He pops in occasionally to threads and heralds the arrival of the EV to all of mankind - how it'll solve all of our problems, world peace, hunger, poverty, the usual stuff. They're also great for those early morning milk-runs.
=)
He pops in occasionally to threads and heralds the arrival of the EV to all of mankind - how it'll solve all of our problems, world peace, hunger, poverty, the usual stuff. They're also great for those early morning milk-runs.
=)
Simple fact, electrification coming, and coming far faster than anyone realised. It no longer matters if you want it too, you would like it too, or whatever. It's happening, end of..........
Gassing Station | General Gassing | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff