The 2009 Lincoln MKS a new fuel-efficient 3.7-liter V-6 engine. (Photo courtesy of Ford)
Posted on 01/09/2008 9:50:29 AM PST by Incorrigible
The 2009 Lincoln MKS a new fuel-efficient 3.7-liter V-6 engine. (Photo courtesy of Ford) |
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Derrick Kuzak's vision of the future could scare some gearheads.
Big pickups would use four-cylinder engines, luxury sedans would come with V-6s instead of V-8s. The venerable V-8 engine would be found only on big commercial trucks.
Ford Motor Co.'s vice president of global product design sees engine downsizing as the clearest way to meet new federal fuel economy standards. The trick will be doing it without slashing power.
"We know our customers want better fuel economy," Kuzak said. "We know how to deliver that near-term."
Starting with the launch of the 2009 Lincoln MKS sedan later this year, Ford will begin a multiyear push to cut the size of its engines.
The MKS will replace the Lincoln Town Car as the flagship of Ford's luxury lineup. Unlike the V8-powered Town Car, the MKS will use a six-cylinder engine.
To make up for its size, the new engine swipes two technologies from the hot-rod world — turbo-charging and direct fuel injection.
The result is a V-6 that provides 13 percent more horsepower than the Town Car's V-8 and increases fuel economy.
Work on the MKS' engine has already begun at Ford's plant in Lima, Ohio. The MKS uses a modified version of the 3.5-liter V-6 built there. Later this year, 3.5-liter work will start up at Ford's Brook Park, Ohio, campus.
Despite big power numbers, convincing buyers that a six-cylinder engine can do the work of a V-8 will be a tough sell.
"After decades of selling power, and power being defined as having more cylinders or bigger displacement, you have to completely redefine" engine marketing, said Brett Smith, assistant director of the manufacturing, engineering and technology group at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich.
Car buyers may say they want more fuel-efficient vehicles, but Smith said brawny consistently outsells thrifty.
That's why whenever an automaker releases a redesigned car or truck, it tends to be more powerful than the one it replaces.
The 2007 Toyota Camry? Even the 158-horsepower four-cylinder model is 26.4 percent beefier than it was in 1996. The V-6 gained 42.6 percent on its climb to 268 horses.
In 2004, General Motors released the Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon small trucks, powered by either a four-cylinder or a five-cylinder engine.
Smith said Ford dealers responded by telling potential buyers that the Colorado was a cylinder short, even though its power numbers were higher than the V- 6 available on Ford's Ranger.
It's a marketing strategy that can't survive new federal mandates of 35 mile-per-gallon fuel efficiency by 2020.
"Everyone's in this together. One company isn't going to be able to sell a bunch of V-8s in a segment where others are selling V-6s. It just won't be possible with these new rules," Smith said.
He added that Ford's chosen technologies, turbo-charging and direct injection, could make small engines powerful enough to allow the company to cut sizes.
Turbo-charging is the practice of forcing more air into an engine cylinder, boosting the power briefly when needed.
Direct injection means injecting fuel directly into those engine cylinders instead of in a port or manifold. The fuel used burns more completely, creating more power with lower emissions. But it's a complex system that requires lots of computer controls.
Combined, the technologies can add thousands to the price of an engine, a cost that Ford's Kuzak said can be reclaimed in less than three years from lower gasoline bills.
There are a handful of cars on the road today that use both technologies, but they tend to be specialty, hot-rod models.
Mazda uses the system in its Speed6. It gets 270 horsepower, 27 percent more than the V-6 Mazda 6 sedan and it costs nearly $7,000 more.
General Motors uses turbo-direct-injection in hot-rod versions of the Saturn Sky and Pontiac Solstice two-door roadsters.
The Saturn Sky Redline uses a 2-liter, four-cylinder engine that gets 50 percent more power than the standard version of the car with a 2.4-liter engine. And it gets 28 miles per gallon on the highway, up from 25 miles on the base Sky.
"These technologies are still marketed as performance add-ons," Smith said. "It's not looked on as a fuel-economy enhancement."
He added that all major automakers are looking at turbo-direct-injection to aid fuel economy, but none has yet mastered it.
Even Ford, the biggest proponent of the technology, plans only 500,000 units by 2012 or about 100,000 engines per year — about 5 percent of its vehicle output.
Kuzak said after 2012, nearly all of Ford's new vehicles will use either that technology or diesel engines.
"I cannot say that we have all of our plans (to get to 35 miles per gallon) buttoned up to 2020. We have our plans through 2012," Kuzak said.
(Robert Schoenberger is a reporter for The Plain Dealer of Cleveland. He can be contacted at rschoenb(at)plaind.com.)
Not for commercial use. For educational and discussion purposes only.
The “more power more efficiently” thing will still leave the greenies screaming. They got pissy when a few “hybrids” came out that used the electric drive to boost performance. What they really want is see us forced into Euroweenie beer cans.
More proof that the marketing folks at Ford haven’t a clue. They’ve tried this same thing twice in the past and both times it was a failure.
Once starting in the late 70’s and on into the mid 80’s. Mustangs and T-Birds with 4 cylinders that no one wanted.
Then again later when they designed the “modular engine” that became the current 4.6. Too large, too heavy and too complicated for it’s power output. All because it’s original design displacement was just too small.
Somehow they’ve missed the fact that the vehicles that sold well used a pushrod 302 right up until they no longer made them available.
Too bad about Ford. Another fine old US company taken down by management and labor who have no business in the car business...
Nice....I like those Shelby gt500s....wow
Actually, I do. The F150 has been the best selling truck for a very long time. It has a reputation as being built to be a work truck. They have a reputation of being reliable and durable. The big parts have not historically broke. There have been some off years, however where Ford tried some "value engineering" and paid for it. Ask anyone who owned and F-150 built in 1992-1996. They made the drums and rotors smaller to save weight and you couldn't keep brakes on them. They had a simiar problem with tailgates for a while on older models. They have stayed pretty much on course to cater to their customers of late. But yes, given the declining sales of the F150 and the advance of Toyota on their "turf", it would not surprise me to see Ford try something "bold" to reinvent their product. Quite frankly, I think Toyota is winning lots of appeal because of the advertising. I know I am curious. They have more HP in their LD line and those commercials are awsome. Many F150 owners do not want the bells and whistles that come easier with Chevy trucks but want tough, rugged, durable long lasting machines with low maintenance. Chevys ride nicer and have better creature comforts than most Ford trucks. But F150 has outsold them still. Ford is nervous about losing market share in with their strongest product. It would not surprise me to see them get desparate. Look what happened to the Mustang in the late 70s and 80s. Yikes.
This may be true, but decent metallurgy and not cranking the boost way up compensates for that. I had a 300ZX Turbo that I purposely kept at stock boost most of the time; I sold it at 280,000 miles and when last heard from it was still running around North Texas as a daily driver.
Carolyn
Interesting. One solution for the durability issue, of course, is diesels. But another non-solution is simply to accept the engine's limited lifespan, and balance the cost of replacement and labor against the fuel savings. This is what made American cars different from European cars in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Gas was cheap here, but expensive in Europe, whereas labor was relatively cheaper in Europe than here. The result was smaller high compression European engines that needed major service within 100K. That worked because what the European saved in gas was more than enough to pay Adolph to scrape the head after 60K. When the cars were imported over here, however, it didn’t usually work out to your advantage.
I defer to your greater knowledge of all things Ford, but I can say without fear of contradiction that the 4.4L 296 HP V8 in my BMW X5 is vastly superior to the 3.0L 6 in the same box. Both get crappy mileage with the 6 only a mile or two per gallon ahead of the V8.
The Carter Era gave us the Cadillac V8-6-4.
SEMA, the Speciality Equipment Manufacturer’s Association, has a political action network representing automotive enthusiasts. Free membership, too. I get their newsletters. Surely there are others, but this is one I know of.
“Very nice car but Mazda is discontinuing for 2008 due to lack of interest.”
At $7,000 more than the V6 model, I’m not surprised. They should just replace the V6 with the turbo DSI engine.
Actually, some of the current generation of automatic transmissions are *more* efficient and get better mileage than their manual siblings. The one in the BMW 530i, for example, gets 1-2mpg more than its manual version in both city and highway regimes.
By the way, 6 speed autos are becoming increasingly common, even before this legislation came out. 7 speed or better autos may not be widely adopted just yet because of various technical reasons.
Al Gore-mobile.
...And they are quite pricey.
Hahaha.. .like you’ll have time to worry about the metal fatiguing... good one.
That timing belt (chains are less efficient and less smooth.. fuel economy you know) in that interference engine (since fuel economy is tops, non interference will go the way of the buggy whip for that extra 1-2 inches of compression) is going to snap and kill your engine long long long before the metal parts die from fatigue.
After driving one of these for a while I have seen what a 4 cylinder can do if properly engineered....
I remember having a conversation with an engineering professor a long time ago who stated that when you really feel the “kick” of an engine ... that push you back in the seat punch ... it is not HP but rather torque that we are talking about.
This professor was an advocate of returning to steam power due to it’s high torque ability. However, I imagine that with many of the newer diesel engines, much of the same punch can be duplicated.
that’s because Ford is too cheap to aspirate their 8 cylinder engines which haven’t been retooled since the 1980’s.
With regards to turbos - turbo lag is more or less a thing of the past with electronic wastegates and variable geometry fans in modern turbos. You can also fit one small and one large turbo to an engine to make it boost all the time.
I suspect that Honda’s FCX Clarity will end up being the wave of the future - it’s a 2009 production car (Camry-class) that has a hydrogen fuel cell in the back. 0-60 is rumored to be about 5 seconds.
I always liked the sound of an aftermarket gear system that replaces the timing chains, man those things sound nice when they got up to speed...
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