Ray Leathern drives Ford’s new pint-sized engine (well, two pints if we’re being pedantic) and realises it will fix all the ills of an uncertain energy future.
It’s 2am, I’ve had a few too many pints and I’m flicking through the DSTV channels in my hotel room in my usual, drunken, rifling, style. Sport, sport, sport, tennis, women’s cricket; don’t like any of it, back to movies… two minutes pass and the movies haven’t changed… “WTH DSTV?” I make another pass at it and keep flicking till I get something that catches my fancy. Hold up. It’s a film set in a barren desert with Mel Gibson driving a noisy V8 muscle car with a snarling-supercharger-tower thingy poking out the bonnet. People are chasing him and the only dialogue I can make out beneath ropey Aussie accents is something about finding oil and fuel.
“This must be one of the Mad Max movies…” I tell myself audibly, as if to register to my channel-flicking alter ego not to lose focus. And then it hits me in one of those lucid, beer-fuelled moments that seem to carry more gravity than it would otherwise if you were sober: If Ford have their way and the 1.0-litre EcoBoost engine I’ve been driving all day is a hit, this whole Mad Max, end-of-the-world, apocalypse thing simply won’t happen. If you love your children and want to safeguard their future, and your children’s children’s future, you’ll buy a 1.0-litre Ford EcoBoost.
The world’s oil reserves will be depleted one day, whether we care to admit it to ourselves or not. It isn’t a case of ‘if’, but rather a case of ‘when’. The new 1.0-litre EcoBoost engine from Ford is the antidote to this inevitability. Let me give you the headline facts: 1 000cc’s of displacement, three-cylinders and a turbocharger gives you 92 kW of power and 170 Nm of torque. Fuel consumption on the combined cycle is 4.3 L/100 km and this is the one that gets me, CO2 emissions is just 99 g/km. That’s even better than the darling of the beardy, eco-driving world, the Toyota Prius. It sounds too good to be true doesn’t it? Well, as they say in the Verimark commercials which air at 3am, “… it gets even better.”
What if I told you the 1.0-litre EcoBoost engine I sampled in the Ford Fiesta hatchback, drove with all the verve and excitement of a greyhound at the races? You can scarcely believe it when you put your foot down but it takes off like it’s got blinkers on and wants nothing more than to catch that automated hare. 0 – 100 km/h comes up in less than 9.5 seconds and the top speed is close to the surprisingly peaky side of 195 km/h. You see, more than anything in a good, small car; their needs to be responsiveness in its power delivery. I’ve always maintained that a car can have the tiniest amount of power in the world but if the power delivery is urgent, its all-good, and the car will be engaging to drive. By the same token, you can give an SL65 AMG a detuned Pagani Huayra engine and if the power delivery is a bit lazy, it almost totally defeats the purpose.
The Ford EcoBoost engine is exactly that: urgent, responsive, light, free-spinning. It only has three-cylinders so it sounds like a mini-V6, but it also has that high-pressure, and yet very small turbo, to give instant clout and pick-up the nanosecond you touch the throttle. The chief engineer for the entire Ford EcoBoost project, Andrew Frasier, (there is the 2.0-litre in the ST and the 1.6-litre arriving in the Fiesta ST shortly) was on hand throughout the launch to discuss and explain any bemused technical questions from journalists. Most of the time, however, he was fielding wide-eyed, gushing compliments from the assembled troop who had experienced the full range of the 1.0 EcoBoost’s talents.
Ford posted 125 patents on the EcoBoost technology. To give you an idea of the cleverness going on in an EcoBoost engine: the traditional way of reducing shaking forces in small-displacement engines (three-cylinders especially) is to install a counter-rotating balance shaft inside the motor that cancels out most vibrations. The 1.0-litre EcoBoost has a front pulley and rear flywheel that are unbalanced with weights placed to precisely counteract the natural shaking forces of the engine. The engine mounts are specially designed to absorb the engine’s shaking forces as well. The result is that the 1.0-litre EcoBoost is actually very refined.
What struck me about it, aside from what I’ve already mentioned, was how sporty the EcoBoost experience was. I doubt anyone will achieve the fuel consumption figures Ford claim because they’ll just enjoy keeping their toe in it all the time; although I have full belief the car can attain its claimed 4.3 L/100 km figure if driven sanely and in conditions that are conducive to hyper-miling. Ford could have given it 70 kW and we all would’ve been satisfied I’m sure, but the EcoBoost engineers pushed the boat out and endeavoured to make the engine something special.
92 kW per litre is currently the highest specific-output of any engine in the world. Impressively, only Mercedes-Benz AMG will surpass this when the A45 AMG hot hatch debuts this year with its AMG-derived 2.0-litre turbocharged engine, producing 95 kW per litre. It’s no wonder it was awarded the 2013 World Engine of the Year Award. When I heard that announcement I assumed it was a typical, token, green-washing award from the jury, but now that I’ve experienced it – I can vouch for it. The 1.0-litre Ford EcoBoost is utterly deserving of the Engine of the Year Award and it represents a multi-million dollar investment in the technology, so it is here to stay.
The Ford Fiesta EcoBoost goes like the clappers, sounds brilliant and is greener than a Toyota Prius; I just can’t get over that. And the best thing is Ford is going to be putting it into everything they can from now on: the Ford EcoSport crossover, the Ford Focus, the Ford Transit Van and all sorts of other cars across the world. Along with their Econetic stop/start technology to further shave off extra L/100.
What about the rest of the 2013 Fiesta then? Well, I was mostly marvelling at the brilliant little engine under the bonnet, but what I can report besides – is that the new Aston Martin face, and let’s not kid ourselves, it looks exx-acc-tly like an Aston Martin, looks a bit awkward in my personal opinion. The face is disproportionate to the rest of the tall, practical glasshouse of the Fiesta and it therefore looks unbalanced. Like an Aston Martin swallowed a Fiesta. Perhaps the one-piece grille will grow on us when we see more of them around, but at least one thing is for certain, Aston Martin don’t need to use the Toyota Aygo for their next Cygnet, just take the EcoBoost Ford Fiesta et al… and away you go.
The Trend spec Fiesta with 15-inch wheels rides nicely on the road, the 16-inch wheels on the Titanium spec tend to deflect over road imperfections way too eagerly. The Fiesta in that top specification turns into a right old bouncy super-mini and is less enjoyable to pilot over an imperfect road, however the trade-off comes in the sacrificing the better, chrome-edged interior. The 1.0-litre EcoBoost Trend, and its cheaper pricing, does me just fine thank you very much
The only catch is, the 1.0-litre EcoBoost Fiesta still comes at a premium over a normally aspirated model. The Ford Fiesta 1.0 EcoBoost in Titanium spec will set you back R231 500 and the 1.0 EcoBoost in Trend spec commands a R211 200 asking price. Ford justifies the price by saying that’s simply what the new engine is worth. I see their motivation. Is it worth it to the end user? Only time and consumer response will tell.
