Jeep Renegade 1.6 MultiJet 120 HP Acceleration Test

There are only a few good cars made in America with 1.6-liter engines. However, none of them are turbodiesels, as every automaker decided it would make for a boring, slow car.

Which is why this 1.6-liter Jeep is not made in America. Not that this is any kind of surprising revelation, since everybody who buys a Renegade should know it's made in the same factory as the Fiat 500X.

But anyway, the 1.6-liter MultiJet is a relatively decent engine for what it is, producing a respectable 120 horsepower. In one way or another, models as varied as the Suzuki Vitara, Opel Combo D, Alfa Romeo Giulia and Fiat Tipo all use it.

We're not going to say it's bad because it's got separate cooling for the head, intelligent turbine software, and good injectors. But when found under the hood of the Jeep Renegade, it's usually joined by a manual gearbox and front-wheel drive.

I think it was over a year ago when we tested the Renegade Trailhawk with a regular 2.0 MultiJet II rated at 170 PS. And let me tell you that it never felt fast. I mean, you get the same amount of power in an old Golf GTD, but that does a lot more with it.

When downgraded to a 1.6-liter, the 0 to 100 km/h (62 mph) time of the Renegade drops to 10.2 seconds. And while the official average fuel consumption is rated at 4.6 l/100km, you can see in this video that the Renegade averaged about twice that.

Given all that mumbo jumbo, we can only show more appreciation to carmakers like Mazda and Toyota that refuse to install downsized engines for the sake of tricking European emissions regulations. At the end of the day, the best tool you have when saving money on gas is your right foot, not the size of the engine.