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.
Say, oh, a $5 donation to the Republican presidential candidate of the winner’s choice?
Gotta say I’ve certainly been surprised by the performance of some of my 4-cyl imports... None of them has been anything that’d burn the rubber off the rims, mind you, but they’ve been adequate and comfortable as daily drivers for me, I guess, if vastly underpowered (but I always want more power!).
I just think there are a significant number of guys out there who wouldn’t be caught dead driving around in a big 4-banger pickup, and it’s gonna take one hell of a sales campaign to flip ‘em. In fact, that may be one of the main reasons Toyota and Nissan, for example, have gone to the V8 for their full-size pickups, instead of going the 4-cyl turbodiesel route.
I feel the same way about my 380HP Lexus. :-)
MM (in TX)
No I have not said they didn’t I said the majority they have made were low end engines in low end cars and most are more than a decade old.
I don’t know why you keep taking this as something personal.
Nissan belts fail, ALL BELTS FAIL. You sound like someone who’s declaring the Titanic can’t sink.
ALL BELTS FAIL, the question is only under what circumstances and how often. For you to make the blanket statement that no Nissan belt has ever failed under its recommended replacement interval is nonsense.
Once again, I could not agree with you more.
Now double that WRT the turbo’d ones. (yeah, that’ll start another fight, I reckon)
I once owned a German-built Opel. A 1900 sedan(think they called it an Ascona over in the Fatherland) Absolutely the Best Damn Car I have ever owned! Had FI, rear-wheel-drive, great fun on a mountain road. Couldn’t kill it with a cannon-and you couldn’t give ‘em away. Ask most any other owner, they were the biggest POS ever made. But not this one. Go figure.
Fantastic in every way until the day the neglected tranny lube ran comepletely out, locked up in a curve, slid into the path of a Mercedes and we hit head on. I walked away but I still miss that car.
I’m looking at a list of timing belt/interference engines... and there are some *interesting* entries here. Not at ALL “low end”.
I can see why you might fear a simple little bet. Ah well. You have refused to provide proof for your assertion that Nissan belts fail before their 60 or 105K replacement points, I shouldn’t be surprised that you won’t take this bet.
Not really starting another fight there - the US-market VAG engines are different than the ones they use elsewhere; the ones we get are crap and not nearly so well engineered as the ones they ship in Europe.
sorry, should have explained myself better-wasn’t referring so much to you, I meant other VeeDub owners that haven’t yet had the oh-so-typical problems.
In addition to the Opel I’ve owned a couple of VW Quantum(Passat) Syncro wagons. Best winter car made! Well, until you need parts. So much is now NLA, and those that are still available can sometimes have very questionable QC. Essentially an Audi drivetrain with VW switchgear. Practially unstoppable in snow. It’s no wonder the Audi was weight-penalized and then banned from so many racing orgs. All-wheel-drive has too much of an advantage. Where it’s still allowed-like WSC(?) they’ve dominated everything else-all while using diesel power-for the last several years. Nothing else comes close.
But would I buy a new one now-even IF I could afford one? Not on your life.
Technically correct. The ones I was referring to use a compressor wheel and housing just like a turbo charger and run off the crank. Technically, they are called a centrifugal supercharger. They are not the positive displacement type pumps (Lysholm screw rotors) that most people recognize as a "Supercharger"..
My comment was a joke, a play on the beer commercials where one of the guys does something out of character for a man and is crushed beneath a gigantic beer can falling out of the sky. Your boycott for Ford’s apparent support of gay rights just didn’t seem to fit the topic. So I made a joke (bad one maybe).
You could tell me that the CEO of Ford was a homosexual, Jewish, Nazi that voted for Al Gore. It would not affect my opinion of the product the company produces. I would still like to see the big American Auto Companies do better.
Spktyr,
Your assertion that no Nissan belt has ever failed before its replacement interval is on its face beyond comical.
Nissan, while a fine manufacturer is not perfect, for you to claim that no belt in a Nissan ever made has failed before its mileage interval just shows flat out ignorance.
Again, You seem to keep putting words in my mouth. Whereas you are are claiming ALL when it comes to NO Nissan has ever had a timing belt fail before its recommended interval, I have clearly said MOST US cars that have interference engines and belts fall into the low end and most of those are older designs.
Why you believe Nissan can produce 100% perfection in its parts 100% of the time is beyond me. Parts fail, even great parts fail, even parts that have been inspected multiple times fail. You cannot produce 100% reliable parts 100% of the time, no one can. In case you missed the memo from the man upstairs... this world is populated with HUMAN BEINGS, and human beings are flawed, and any system developed by and run by human beings is also flawed.
All it takes for the best timing belt to fail is say, Oh I don’t know... a slight water pump leak... you ever seen what radiator fluid will do to one of those puppies? Even with if the belt had zero defects from the manufacturer its not going to last its life expectancy if exposed to anti-freeze.
I don’t know why you think Nissan is some God to the manufacturing and mechanical process, but they aren’t. Belts fail, it happens, the only thing good manufacturing and qc can do is minimize the failure rates, they cannot get rid of them. To assert that no Nissan belt has ever failed before interval is simply a ludicrous claim.
The timing belt on an inteference is the weakest part of an engine, in terms of its failure resulting in catastrophic engine failure immediately. Same is true of an interference engine with a chain, the chain is the weakest part that can lead to catastophic failure, but the chain is far stronger and more reliable than the belt.
Lincoln came out with a concept car (called the MKR, if I remember correctly). It had a very distinctive and boldly styled split grill. The design was inspired by the bow of a ship splitting the water into two elegant wakes.
I personally thought it was great, and it received great press and a lot of positive buzz about the new Lincoln styling direction and the possible reinvigoration of the Lincoln brand. However, like most show cars, it leaned toward the “love it or hate it” side of the spectrum, and that was scary.
So, as Ford is wont to do, they watered the design down to the point that some people still hate it, but no one loves it...
Fletcher J
Please come up with ONE documented example of this happening.
Google is your friend. I’ll wait.
***
That said, the thing is that while it may happen, it’s so rare as to be practically never. You probably won’t find any entries on Google about the timing belt failing before interval. You can pretty much count on it not happening.
Now, after the belt is replaced the first time, if someone screws up the install all bets are off.
Finally, Nissan designs the water pump in such a way that if it DOES fail that it doesn’t leak on the timing belt - the weep hole for the pump is outside the sealed timing belt case on all Nissans.
Oil leak? Same thing, cam seals are more or less outside the sealed timing cover.
Those aren’t new either, they’ve been around since the late 70s at the very least.
And since you fear to take the bet, I’ll point out that the top end domestics like Chrysler and Cadillac have, and in some cases still, use interference engines with timing belts. So your “low end only” argument doesn’t hold water.
Shades of 1976,, here they come with the Mustang II and exploding engines.
I’d like to see the size of the taxpayer funded grants these thieves are getting to go this route again.
My old Volvo had the oil pressure sender inside the timing case. A small leak from it was responsible for a couple of timing belts getting eaten before a mechanic noticed it and fixed it while in there for the timing belt. Sounds like Nissan has it pretty well figured out.
Yeah... you couldn’t pay me to take a Nissan four banger (they’re hit-or-miss and not that great until recently) but their sixes are hard to beat.
I owned a ‘96 Nissan Sentra with the 1.6 4-cyl. A pretty mediocre car but mostly pretty reliable. The engine itself gave absolutely zero problems, and is still running strong for a co-worker, now with over 200,000 miles on it. I had good luck with other, earlier 4-cyl Nissan engines, too, like the 2.0 that had 8 spark plugs, or the 2.4 12-valve that my ‘90 pickup had.
Their more recent 2.5 four as used in many of their products seems to have been much more problematic. A friend here at work has a 2003 Altima that has some weird issues.
Only time will tell how good the current generation Honda 2.4, like the one in my Accord, is. I can’t complain about its refinement or performance, especially considering the 3,400 lbs of car it’s hauling around. And it has a timing chain, not a belt ;)
Yeah, the current QR25 engine isn’t very good. The KA24DE that it replaced was excellent, though.
The Z24 engine with 8 plugs and the KA24E that was in your truck were bulletproof, but some of the cars came with suspicious engines. Like I said, the Nissan fours are hit or miss. Only the sixes seem to be consistently excellent over time.
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