Unless you’ve been living under a rock for all these years, you may have noticed that many car manufacturers have started to ditch their big engines for much smaller ones. This is not just due to environmental purposes as in some cases it is logical. Let’s take for example Mercedes. They recently dropped all their V12 cars because it was unnecessary. It was too big and just a pain for customers to maintain as it was huge and required more specialist attention. F1 is another example with cars now having a 6 cylinder when 20 years ago they were all V12s.
Big engines used to be all the rage for power. If you wanted a powerful car you needed a lot of cylinders and a lot of cubic inches. Nowadays all you need is a turbo, a battery and an ECU remap. Speed and power for engines is now somewhat easy to get. How many cars with tiny engines push crazy horsepower figures nowadays? Even the Koenigsegg Gemera without any of its 3 batteries pushes 600hp out of its tiny 2.0 3-cylinder engine. For Lamborghini to get 600hp upwards they needed a 6.5 liter V12.
Small engines are lighter too. A 4-cylinder can produce the same power as an 8 or 12 cylinder yet it can also be 100 to 200kg lighter. It will also be a whole lot smaller which means the engine can be pushed back within the car to give a better weight distribution. What does this mean? It means you can easily push the engine more towards the middle of the car where weight distribution is better.
An example of this is with the Mercedes AMG GT. The engine compartment at the front could well easily fit a 6.2 V8 from its predecessor the SLS, but what Mercedes did was somewhat clever. They chose a smaller but equally powerful 4.0 Biturbo V8 and stuck most of it behind the front axle/wheels which then made it somewhat a mid-engined car. This made it better around the corners and a whole lot more balanced.
If you stick a too large engine in a car it can be a catastrophe. Take the Audi RS5 8T/8F first-generation. It had the same engine as the Audi R8 but it was a bit more powerful at 444hp. The engine was put far too forwards and that caused serious understeer. n the latest generation RS5 Audi now uses a 444hp twin-turbo V6 which is far better for the car.
Emissions Tests Make Things Harder for More Cylinders
This is essentially why Porsche dropped the flat-6 originally from the 718 Boxster and Cayman models in 2016. They eventually brought it back for the new 4.0 GTS and GT4 models. Emissions tests made it too hard for Porsche to have the flat-6 unit in the standard Cayman/Boxster 718 models. Yet the test for this was absurd. The cars had to drive at a very low speed to monitor the emissions which are completely different from real life-like driving. In fact, some even say that the current 4-cylinder is just as bad (or even worse) on emissions than the previous flat-6 engine.
It’s not just bad in Europe though. China is absurd. Car manufacturers around the world have had to make separate engines for their cars in order to sell them in China without being penalized for it. China has huge taxes, congestion charges, etc for cars with larger engines, especially within larger cities. Because these manufacturers still want to get sales the only way to defeat this system is to take one of their normal cars and fit a ridiculously small engine which many would find a bit weird.
An example of this is with Mercedes. The CLS usually comes in an array of 4 to 6 cylinder engines all somewhat economical. However, this was simply not enough for the Chinese market. That’s why they created the CLS260, a 184hp 1.5 liter 4-cylinder hybrid sedan. It sounds absurd as the CLS is a big heavy car and to think such a small engine can power it is insane. You would think it would be underpowered but the 48-volt battery does provide a bit of torque. It does though hit 60 in 8.7 seconds which is a bit slow.
Mercedes are not the only one though. Take the Mustang and Camaro. It is the first time in years, that they have been offered with 4-cylinder engines. The last time they were offered with them was in the oil crisis and emissions crisis where not only gas shot up in value but car manufacturers were criticized for not bringing out economical cars. The modern 4-cylinder Mustang and Camaro are brilliant for emissions. Let’s face it both their V8s are at risk of extinction. In fact, the Camaro is set to be axed in 2023. We reckon that Ford Europe may not even bring over the V8 Mustang in the next-generation Mk7 model because it’s getting so hard. Ford also dropped the V6 Mustang from all of their markets because the entry-level 4-Cylinder is far faster and much easier to pass the emissions tests.
Smaller is Getting Better
Small engined cars have always been pretty good. Over the years many people have had these typical stereotypes, such as them they’re all economy cars, they’re slow and they’re the “budget” option. This is completely wrong since over the years there have been many great fast cars that have had smaller engines. In rallying, stock car racing, and other huge racing series the humble 4-cylinder was the only engine option. This is why hommage cars such as the BMW E30 M3 or 190E Mercedes Cosworth used the 4-cylinder engine rather than a bigger 6 or 8 cylinders.
Nowadays there are so many cars with tiny engines pushing out crazy performance figures. The A45 AMG S proves that you do not need a big engine to go fast. It’s 2.0 400+hp Biturbo 4-cylinder is rated as one of the most powerful engines in the world in terms of BHP per liter.
You see this is where things make sense and has for years. You have a small lightweight car, what is the need to fit it with a huge big engine? The key figure is BHP per litre and the higher that is within a car the faster it goes and feels. An 800kg Kit Car (home DIY car) with 300hp will essentially be faster than a 600+ hp Bentley Continental weighing over 2500kg. A 300hp 800kg car has 375hp per ton which means per 1000kg it has 375hp. A Continental on the other hand has 233.33 hp which makes it slower and less powerful per 1000kg. This doesn’t mean that the engine powering the small 800kg car will be stupidly powerful if it were fitted in a Bentley or that the W12 from the Continental would be stuidly slow if it were fitted in the 800g Kit Car.
Featured image credits via: motor1.com