Am I reading the figures right for these engines or is it my mindset?
Current car is a 1.6 petrol engine giving 155bhp, great little engine handles the climbs at normal speed when I go to wales or scotland, previous cars have been around this figure, I did have a 1.4 which only gave out 89ish bhp and it was terrible.
So I’m looking at new cars, 1.0 eco and the seem to range from 80bhp to 120bhp was the max I could find, how do these compare to the dinosaur engines of the past? Are they quick enough powerful enough for that big climb on the way to cyb without holding up traffic or just underpowered city cars.
Can you get a normal midrange engine with some power or is this the way motoring is now, don’t want to buy something that 3 months down to the line I’m regretting, I noticed Ford Fiesta st lime has some power but you can’t fit a towbar (bike rack).
Best thing to do would be to take one for a test drive & see. One person's 'perfectly fine' would be another's 'horrendously slow'.
How often do you go up the big climb to CyB? Is it worth buying a car based around getting up that hill when you only go there once a year?
120bhp is perfectly good in a small car - whether or not you'll see the economy figures quoted is another kettle of haddock (clue - you won't).
A bloke at work recently chopped in his 1.4TSi Polo that was putting out around 140bhp - certainly enough power in a car that size.
Power's the same. Torque's likely the same, or more since they'll be turbos. They'll be fine.
The economy will be nowhere near as good as claimed though.
Test drive, its very subjective.
How often do you go up the big climb to CyB? Is it worth buying a car based around getting up that hill when you only go there once a year?
My C-max has 100hp (or 95, 98, something like that) and I tow a boat* with it, that's what gearboxes are for! I'm sure 120hp can manage a couple of weekend warriors and a bike rack.
*in retrospect I would have bought a diesel or at least a few more cc's, but the car came before the boat and it's not slow enough to be worth swapping.
whether or not you’ll see the economy figures quoted is another kettle of haddock (clue – you won’t).
Depends how you drive, as soon as you floor anything with a turbo the efficiency goes right down. The principal is you should be able to drive around with the 1.0 engine doing all the work 99% of the time, the turbo just deals with steep hills and short slip roads. The other side of the equation is what Mazda and some others are doing, building engines closer to the atkinson cycle, which means much bigger engines for the same power output (i.e. their 2.0 replaced the older 1.8 with the same power) but they can be run such that at BDC the cylinder is close to atmospheric meaning you've extracted almost all the available energy from the combustion where as a turbo Petrol could still have >2bar at BDC
It doesn't make a difference as TINAS points out as long as the weight is the same and you know how to use a gearbox.
That said, you tend to get more torque once the turbo kicks in which is pretty low revs on a modern turbocharged runabout, so you can hold a lower gear. i.e. in the current 1.2 turbo (105bhp) I get more grunt from 1500 to about 3000 RPM than I did in a previous 2.5l na (205bhp) - partly due to the car being lighter, but the maximum torque is similar (but at a lower engine speed).
I think this is part of the reason people get worse MPG than they "should", too - it's easy to work the engine harder without dropping a gear, and the extra power means more fuel. Plus an engine that's more efficient at part load you'll notice the extra power demanded in fuel economy more (because at full load there's very little difference in efficiency - but cars don't operate at full load much).
170bhp was fine in my old SMax which was a pretty quick car really and didn't bog down when loaded up. My current 102bhp T5 camper van seems to do OK too. so 80 - 120bhp in a small car will be ample. It's all about the gearing.
I tested a new Ibiza FR last year with the 113bhp 1.0 turbo and while it had a tiny bit of lag over 2500rpm it shifted far quicker than I was expecting, to the point where I wondered if that bhp figure they gave was conservative! Funds don't allow at the minute but when they do, I'll be getting one, that Ibiza was ace, looked the dogs with 18 inch alloys was nice inside, can easily fit my large T130 in the boot with only the front wheel removed, was quiet, rode well, cruised well, had loads of kit and looks very "hot hatch" like without being needlessly OTT.
I'd be a little more hesitant to look for a Focus/Golf/Leon/Astra with a lower powered 1.0, really I'd want 120/130bhp minimum in car that size, but for a supermini 100-120bhp is more than enough, especially if it comes with a slick 6-speed box.
My daughter has one of the 1.0l Fiesta's with 125hp and it drives like a car with a much bigger engine - in fact it reminds me of driving the 1.6GTi 205 I had back in the day.
Having said that the 120hp 1.6 turbo in our Merc A180 feels a fair bit quicker, is quieter and is better on fuel than the Fiesta (although some of that might relate to my daughter's heavy right foot).
There ain’t no replacement for displacement, as the grammatically poor saying states. A smaller engine might have similar peak power to a larger engine but across the Rev range it will not ( twin turbos improve matters somewhat). As said, go for a long test drive and see if is acceptable to you, take a friend and two heavy suitcases.
As discussed in the torque thread, cars can feel fast but actually not be, smaller peaky engines do this.
There ain’t no replacement for displacement, as the grammatically poor saying states. A smaller engine might have similar peak power to a larger engine but across the Rev range it will not ( twin turbos improve matters somewhat). As said, go for a long test drive and see if is acceptable to you, take a friend and two heavy suitcases.
As discussed in the torque thread, cars can feel fast but actually not be, smaller peaky engines do this.
I'd have thought the opposite actually. A 1.0 petrol engine with a constant 0.6bar turbo should give a torque (and power) curve similar to a NA 1.6 engine (because that's all it's doing, putting 1.6l of air into a 1.0 engine).
The turbo is there to give you torque (and thus power) low down. So when you cruise allong nicely with no boost in 5th and hit a hill, the engine just effectively becomes a 1.6 when you put your foot down, meaning you don't have to shift down a couple of gears and rev the engine upto it's peak power.
Atkinson cycle engines (mazda skyactive) do the opposite, they open the exhaust valve after BDC on the intake cycle, so some air gets expelled and you effectively have maybe 1.0l of air in a 2.0 engine (but without the pumping losses of partial throttle openings), until you floor it and it goes back to being a normal engine.
My MiTo had a 155hp 1.4 engine that gave me around 45mpg. No obvious turbo lag either.
It was certainly fun to dive and way more powerful than the chassis could cope with!
My current Focus has a 165hp diesel and fells like a slug in comparison.
So, figures don't tell the story you need to dive them.
TINAS
What we need are Dino cell graphs for two engines from the same manufacturer with different displacements and similar power outputs.
The Honda 1.6 diesel has 10 bhp more than the older 2.0, I think that is to beef it up a bit to cover the lower torque output. anyone driven both?
I think you would have to run the smaller engine at a higher boost to cover lower volumetric efficiency, although I take your point.
Reliability is also an issue in higher output engines, will cost go up for the use of more exotic materials and construction?
I've googled BDC and am unsure whether this is a reference to the British Drift Championship (well-sorted RX7!) or the British Dance Council. In this context I've settled for Barking and Dagenham College.
Rockhopper,
I would put that down to weight and gearing. Also fuel type if the mito is petrol, less inertia as well to accelerate the pistons,
Modern car diesels are freaks high faster and higher reving thanthey were originally intended for, but they don’t do it as well as an ICE.
Just Changed the wifes car from a old skool Cmax 1.8Turbo Diesel with 115BHP to a brand new Seat Arona 1.0TSI with 95BHP.
Even though its 20BHP down and a much smaller capacity it drives just fine, feels nearly as quick(baring in mind its still running in)and is more economical around town.
Drove to Whitby from Manchester with 5 people(4adults/1 kid) and luggage and not once did it struggle on the motorway or moors.
I would certainly recommend it
The only useful comment in here is test drive it.
All your theory doesn't really come true in test drive ime Tina's .
Make great town cars but wind one up to 70mph and then hit a hill..... Example the one up to dunnottar turn off on the a90. Just bogs down unless you shift down a couple notches (0.9tce and 1.2 puretech 110). 90bhp in my car doesn't need shifting down to maintain speed on the same climb....
Horses for courses but since I actively avoid town in a car and generally use them on nsl roads .
But apparently electrics the way forward these days.
Don’t forget the map controls the feel of the car from the drivers seat to a certain extent.
only the stop watch tells truth:
0-100mph
60- 100mph
30-70mph through gears
50 -70 in gear
0-60 and top speed ( and aerodynamics) are about gearing with modern cars imo.
Comparing the torque curves of my daughters 1.0l Fiesta with the 1.6l the 1.0l has a fair bit more torque, slightly more power and also develops both the torque and power at lower revs. In fact at any given point in the rev range it looks like it always has more torque and more power than the 1.6.
That's also how it feels like to drive - it's not gutless at all, and in fact feels like a decent normally aspirated 1.6 which I suppose is what they were trying for.
Comparing it to a 205 GTi 1.6 from back in the day (which it kind of reminds me of to drive) it's got way more torque everywhere, and also a good bit more power everwhere. Again it doesn't look like there is any point in the rev range where the 1.0L Fiesta doesn't have more power and torque and in most cases it's very significant. At 1500rpm the Fiesta has nearly double the torque available.
Interesting how technology moves on Steve. The 1.6 isn’t turbo is it? The 1.0 probably has more charge forced in than the na 1.6. I bet the 1.6 lives longer!
I think we might be talking at cross purposes here. I don’t dispute that a turbo engine can make up some displacement difference. So downsizing a na 2.0 with a 1.4 turbo makes sense from a performance point of view. But replacing a 2.0 turbo with a 1.6 turbo (wick turned up) does not.
If you think of them as 3 cylinder 1L engines, they are pretty quick. Will hold speed uphill, maybe not 4 up and fully loaded though, not tried it! Not great MPG when you're on full throttle either.
As above, a test drive with loaded car would be recommended.
I swear STW is the new PH. OR maybe the old PH as there are loads of threads on the EcoBoost.
Fwiw in my case both my test drives were in cars significantly bigger than a fiesta.....
Atkinson cycle engines (mazda skyactive)
Point of order - Toyota did this in the 2003 MkII Prius, and possibly even the 1997 MkI (not sure) so don't give Mazda all the credit 🙂
The 4 pot 1.2 TSI in my wife's Ibiza is very good, as above I worried it would be all headline grabbing max power figure and nothing when you're just driving about, but it's a seemly, almost lag-less thing that just drives like a 1.6 from 10 years ago. Doesn't lose speed even 4 up (2 adults, teenager and a 4 year old) on steep stuff.
If you drive like a div isn't not very economical, but what is. It's 40mpg+ at 70-80mph.
P- Jay, have you experienced the 1.8 tsi in the same car?
If you were as impressed with the 1.2 as me, the 1.8 is mental, pulls like a diesel low down, mid range punch is mad, and you don’t really need to go above 5k but will rev to near 7k.
No not yet, I bet it shifts though!
im hoping my next car will be a 2.0TSi but it’ll be a stretch.
Interesting how technology moves on Steve. The 1.6 isn’t turbo is it? The 1.0 probably has more charge forced in than the na 1.6. I bet the 1.6 lives longer!
The 1.6 Fiesta is an NA engine - I suspect it'll probably be phased out as the 1.0l turbo looks like it makes a lot more sense. I think there is a 1.6 turbo available in the fiesta as well, however that'd be the performance models with a lot more power.
Our Merc A180 is a 1.6 turbo and that's an interesting comparison to the Fiesta. The Fiesta has slightly more power (125hp v 121hp) but a fair bit less torque (125ft/lb v 147 ft/lb) so it sounds like the A180 is running a very conservative boost level (certainly it can be chipped to a lot more). Despite being a bigger and heavier car it's slightly quicker and slightly more economical (from what we're seeing at least) than the Fiesta although some of that difference might be gearbox related (the A180 has a sophisticated 7-speed auto while the Fiesta is a 5-speed manual).