Ford 3-cyl EcoBoost gives Continental turbo award-winning debut

In line with prevailing trends of downsizing, the two most recent winners of the prestigious International Engine of the Year awards have been small sub-1,000cc engines with less than four cylinders. It was the Fiat’s 875cc two-cylinder TwinAir in 2011, and this year it is the Ford 1.0-litre 3-cylinder EcoBoost engine that incidentally made history by being the highest-ever scoring engine.

The engine made its commercial debut in the Ford Focus in April, replacing the naturally aspirated 1.6-litre Duratec engine. Currently, the new engine accounts for almost a quarter of the Focus’ European buyers, and with as much as 30% of German and British Focus sales aimed at this new variant.

Available in 99hp and 123hp outputs, the new three-pot will eventually power the Fiesta-based B-Max MPV, with introduction to the Focus-based C-Max and Grand C-Max MPVs to follow. Our speculation is that the Fiesta will eventually receive this engine at some eventual point in time.

Charging the engine is a new turbocharger from Continental, the firm’s first venture in forced induction technology. Continental’s partner in this business is Schaeffler, and the turbo is being manufactured in Schaeffler’s plant in Lahr, Germany, that has an annual manufacturing capacity of 2 million units.

The new turbo is designed to allow for fully automatic assembly on one axis, a quality which Continental claims to ensure high quality and robustness whilst maintaining healthy cost benefits. Its optimized thermodynamics and minimization of moving masses is further claimed endow the charger with superb response characteristics.

In response to the increasing global demand for small, downsized engines with significantly reduced consumption and emissions, Continental is focusing initially on the development of a small turbocharger. But the company claims that te basic design is scalable and can be adapted to engines of bigger sizes and outputs, thus forming the basis of a new generation of turbochargers from Continental.

KON

Pictures: Official Continental release.

See also:
– Continental Automotive Group – Visiting the Powertrain Division