Ladies and gentlemen drivers, please sit down and take notes. In an unprecedented move, a group of carmakers from Europe and Asia have reinvented a few of their engines overnight. There was no official announcement or press release, the companies simply decided to shuffle certain powerplants in an instant. I found this out yesterday, when the International Engine of the Year Awards 2014 were announced. It’s either this or the Awards’ website happens to be flooded with technical inconsistencies. Oh dear...
Fret not, automakers BMW, Mazda, Skoda and Volkswagen haven’t lost their engineering minds. Wait, fret yes - the benchmark-setting International Engine of the Year Awards are slipping.
You would imagine that a panel of 82 motoring experts from across the world wouldn’t allow a fraction of a cheval vapeur to go uncounted. And they didn’t, with the exception of a number of models belonging to the aforementioned carmakers.
Perhaps the most blatant use of motoring information comes from the BMW area, where the Awards mistake BMW’s TwinPower technology for its Twin Turbocharged hardware. Last time I checked, the the two-liter diesel on the 16d, 18d and 20d only featured one turbine, leaving the duet stuff to the version powering the 25d models. The failure spreads across an important part of BMW's line-up then.
Yes, across the line-up, as the mistakes also affect the petrol-burning 28i. 245 ps it may have, but two turbines it does not feature. The situation literally escalates to the 2.5- to 3-liter category, where the BMW 750d was baptized M750d. Returning to the petrol area once again, the S55 3-liter TWIN-TURBO inline-6 motivating the M3 and M4 is listed at 436ps, 5ps higher than the official figure. Oh well, many claim Bimmers make more power than the automaker advertises, so this may have just gone official.
When it came to Volkswagen Group cars, the issues menu is a bit more varied. Then again, these Germans have a more confusing engine line-up, so perhaps this is where the explanation lies.
Skoda may be a budget brand, but it can still afford to source the 180 ps of its Octavia from an Audi engine, the 1.8 TSI. The website does mention this and yet it also invents a 180 hp 1.4 TSI engine for the Octavia.
Numbers and engines aside, the 2014 edition of the Awards decided to reward the 192 ps 1.4 TSI engine on the Volkswagen Polo GTI, a car that will be launched in 2015. Interesting rules we have here...
Somewhere within the dark pages of the website, Mazda gets to enjoy the laurels of the Ford EcoBoost 1.6-liter turbocharged engine, but I really can’t remember one of the Japanese’s models that actually uses this powerplant.
The International Engine of the Year Awards should be blessed with somebody who can get this act back together. Otherwise all these titles will just turn into stuff automakers can brag about. Things like Land Rover taking pride in the fact that its Evoque was named the 2012 North American... Truck of the Year. Or, to talk Europe, a five-star Euro NCAP sticker on a Renault Megane whose successor went on to be a three-star vehicle.
And to go back to America, I'd say the International Engine of the Year Awards story needs a recall.
You would imagine that a panel of 82 motoring experts from across the world wouldn’t allow a fraction of a cheval vapeur to go uncounted. And they didn’t, with the exception of a number of models belonging to the aforementioned carmakers.
Perhaps the most blatant use of motoring information comes from the BMW area, where the Awards mistake BMW’s TwinPower technology for its Twin Turbocharged hardware. Last time I checked, the the two-liter diesel on the 16d, 18d and 20d only featured one turbine, leaving the duet stuff to the version powering the 25d models. The failure spreads across an important part of BMW's line-up then.
Yes, across the line-up, as the mistakes also affect the petrol-burning 28i. 245 ps it may have, but two turbines it does not feature. The situation literally escalates to the 2.5- to 3-liter category, where the BMW 750d was baptized M750d. Returning to the petrol area once again, the S55 3-liter TWIN-TURBO inline-6 motivating the M3 and M4 is listed at 436ps, 5ps higher than the official figure. Oh well, many claim Bimmers make more power than the automaker advertises, so this may have just gone official.
When it came to Volkswagen Group cars, the issues menu is a bit more varied. Then again, these Germans have a more confusing engine line-up, so perhaps this is where the explanation lies.
Skoda may be a budget brand, but it can still afford to source the 180 ps of its Octavia from an Audi engine, the 1.8 TSI. The website does mention this and yet it also invents a 180 hp 1.4 TSI engine for the Octavia.
Numbers and engines aside, the 2014 edition of the Awards decided to reward the 192 ps 1.4 TSI engine on the Volkswagen Polo GTI, a car that will be launched in 2015. Interesting rules we have here...
Somewhere within the dark pages of the website, Mazda gets to enjoy the laurels of the Ford EcoBoost 1.6-liter turbocharged engine, but I really can’t remember one of the Japanese’s models that actually uses this powerplant.
The International Engine of the Year Awards should be blessed with somebody who can get this act back together. Otherwise all these titles will just turn into stuff automakers can brag about. Things like Land Rover taking pride in the fact that its Evoque was named the 2012 North American... Truck of the Year. Or, to talk Europe, a five-star Euro NCAP sticker on a Renault Megane whose successor went on to be a three-star vehicle.
And to go back to America, I'd say the International Engine of the Year Awards story needs a recall.
Google News