Repair-It

It isn't a secret that car companies are offering more and more cars with turbo options, but this article is a real eye opener to the direction of the whole industry.

This article covers the fact that BMW only offers turbo drive trains, and all of the German companies are following suit. It even goes into detail of future engine design to be optimized for a turbo, with low RPM torque and shortening the stroke. The objectives are less cylinders = less friction, less stroke = less friction in total = more efficiency. They even go as far as saying that the only Naturally Aspirated engines will be small production cars if at all. There are some pretty high PSI ideas mentioned.

I think this article is worth a read. It doesn't seem to be a CAFE fear mongering article saying that "If we have to be any more efficient we will close the doors", and they are showing their plans to meet it, with actual engineering, so it seems pretty real.

http://blog.caranddriver.com/the-grim-f ... e-winning/

I am not sure how I feel about this. I like a big V8 sound and feel, but I also like modifying things and if cars are getting engines made for turbo, then the engines will likely handle more boost than what comes factory, which should be pretty easy to turn up and retune. That is cool. So people that want a car factory, with good mileage, can buy it and leave it alone and be happy. For me, I can modify it to have more power (hopefully), fairly easily without rebuilding the engine with forged parts first.

Maybe we are transitioning from the big V8 HP wars to modified wars. I personally think it is cool that the industry is basically saying without saying:
Sure we will make Fuel efficient cars that can be easily modified to do what the owner intends. They are really delivering cars that are set up to easily bypass restrictions if one wants to.

On the other hand, I feel like choice is essentially being taken away from the customer, and that just doesn't feel right to me.

From an engineering standpoint, the move to turbos makes sense, just like the push to electric vehicles. But I just prefer V8s and big displacement.

Too many people still haven't experienced this and you see it all the time where someone finally drives something with a V8 and displacement and is like "ok, I didn't get it before, but this is awesome." I want to say some of those opinions were flushed out during Edmunds long term C5 Z06 articles.

I think I mentioned something like this the other day also: turbos (and superchargers) are just displacement on demand. But it is probably a better solution to have small displacement most of the time, and add displacement when you need it (turbo small engine), than it is to have a big engine all of the time that you sometimes cut down to a smaller engine (V8 with cylinder shut down). I don't like that it's true, but it is. On the other hand, this theory falls apart if you are powering a lumbering behemoth like a Ford F-150. Give or take, it ALL comes down to how often you need to make horsepower. If you need the horsepower just to move the vehicle around in traffic, guess what, you're going to get proportionate fuel economy.

Expanding that a bit more, I'll bet that a Honda F20C uses a startling amount of fuel when it is producing 240hp at 8,300 rpm. Which is a good counterpoint to the "but the hp/L is so good" argument.

I miss the era where a big GM V8 powering whatever through a 4-speed automatic was more powerful and more efficient than any similar type of powertrain by any other manufacturer. Now that transmissions have come so far, those other options have improved drastically while I'm not sure the GM stuff has gotten nearly as much benefit. With tons of torque, you just don't need 8 speeds. But the other stuff did, and is now pretty efficient for it.

Today, the only thing that is worth discussing for fuel efficiency is the Corvette w/ LT1. All of the LS3 powered stuff does not get good fuel economy, and it really didn't even in 2008 when it came out. Part of that was the move away from the cathedral port heads of the LS1/Gen III to big rectangular ports.

I suppose the trucks with the Gen V DI V8s also do pretty well, and do seem to at least meet parity with the best of the other manufacturers (like the 5.3 V8 matching ecoboost fuel economy, but probably with worse drivability). Truck wise, the big 3 are leading fuel economy by a long shot. Toyota's iForce 5.7L is horrendous on gas, for example, even if it is a smooth operator with decent power. Same for the Nissan Endurance 5.6L.

But all of these requirements and this push IS driving up costs, for sure. Someone should attempt to quantify that. I would much prefer that the consumer simply vote with their wallet. The problem with regulations is, people think if you just require higher corporate average fuel economy, then you're done and like magic people will get cars with better fuel economy, with zero other effects, as if those greedy OEMs have just been holding out on us all these years. Pretty lazy thinking. They're not "holding out" on us any more than NASA was "holding out" on the American people by not going to the moon prior to 1969. There was a goal and with enough R&D, testing, budget AND the requirements, you can achieve. Requirements alone are meaningless.