So after reading and waiting the past two years, the very first review on the Ford Focus 1.0L ecoboost is out :-
www.autoexpress.co.uk/carreviews/firstdrives/278503/ford_focus_10litre_ecoboost.html
Quite a good review, shame there is no mention of the real world economy figures.
I find the idea very appealing but wondered what your views are on this car (with this engine combination).
Will this be another Fiat twin air fiasco where some people complain about terrible real world fuel economy ?
I suspect that these smaller engined cars with a turbo will need to be driven in a certain manner to get high mpg's.
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I think anyone who thought Ford would somehow get this new engine all wrong were underestimating their engineering abilities. Im no Ford fan by any stretch, but their success suggests that on the whole they know what they are doing.
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More than 200 engineers worked on the development of this engine.
Should work shouldn't it?
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If it can last for three or four years as a repmobile and become a mainsream engine in a Focus I might just consider it in a Fiesta sized car.
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It strikes me that these little engines are going to be worked very hard. Time will tell, I suppose, just how long they last.
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What I want is a large capacity lightly-stressed engine. I'm disappointed that Ford have dropped the 2 litre petrol engine for the Focus and put a 1.6 litre in its place. I subscribe to the philosophy that there's no substitute for cubic inches.
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Was a write up in the DT on Saturday - apparently losing a cylinder and going down to 1.0l costs MORE than the 1.6!
Small forced induction engines give better results on the EC consmption / CO2 tests where they are no doubt run off boost, but in real life are likely to drink a lot harder once you boot them to get them on boost. I'll stick with heavy oil I think...
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>> Small forced induction engines give better results on the EC consmption / CO2 tests where
>> they are no doubt run off boost, but in real life are likely to drink
>> a lot harder once you boot them to get them on boost. I'll stick with
>> heavy oil I think...
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Me too, a torquey diesel is my preference. I still use incandescent light bulbs where they do the best job as well, regardless of the tree huggers best efforts to ban them.
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>> Small forced induction engines give better results on the EC consmption / CO2 tests where
>> they are no doubt run off boost, but in real life are likely to drink
>> a lot harder once you boot them to get them on boost.
Evo had a brief drive in the Focus Zetec-S last month with the 177 bhp 1.6 turbo. They were very complimentary about the engine, praising its guts and vigour. Yet, against a claimed mpg of 47.1, they saw "low 20's" with enthusiastic driving.
Every turbo petrol engine I've ever experienced has truly guzzled fuel when driven hard. It seems the new technology hasn't completely eradicated this tendency.
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Sounds a bit like the Fiat TwinAir. 69 mpg reported as official figure, in normal use nobody can get 45, or figures something like that. Figures found in a chart on the site that dares not speak its name!
Last edited by: Meldrew on Thu 9 Feb 12 at 20:31
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>> www.whatcar.com/car-news/ford-focus-1-0-ecoboost-review/261246
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>> Whatcar? review.
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LOL, Whatcar? seem to think a reworded (maybe) press release is a review!
The real world economy of this 3-pot in a C-Max Grand will be interesting to see.
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May well be, but it appears to be from Frankel who appears to enjoy the actual driving bit too.
Cropley: www.autocar.co.uk/www.autocar.co.uk/CarReviews/FirstDrives/Ford-Focus-1.0-125-Ecoboost-Zetec/261245/
52mpg from spirited driving, with some others reporting mid-30s.
Last edited by: Lygonos on Thu 9 Feb 12 at 21:31
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>> May well be, but it appears to be from Frankel who appears to enjoy the
>> actual driving bit too.
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Yeah, most odd though when the article is full of phrases like "Ford’s own engineers say a Focus fitted with the 1.0-litre Ecoboost engine is the quietest of the entire range."
Which suggest the author hasn't even seen the car, let alone driven it.
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I've read more than a few car 'reviews' that gave the distinct impression that the author had swallowed the press release(s) but not actually driven the car!
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I'd be fairly confident that Croppers has driven it.
Instinctively I'm with L'escargot and prefer larger, lightly-stressed engines, but Steve's comment on the 1.0 Ford engine is illuminating:
"Amazingly, the car is even long-legged. You've got to be indicating nearly 90mph before the tacho shows 3000rpm in sixth, and it can maintain this up hill and down dale." (My 2.0 TSI Octavia shows 80 mph at 3,000 rpm.) So if it's not the highly-stressed little screamer that one might have expected, it could have a long life.
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It is highly stressed, just not through high RPM - the amount of boost increases stress on each bang.
High boost and rpm is not an immediate recipe for disaster - plenty of 'lightly stressed' engines suffer early death because they haven't been given a beating from time-to-time.
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Nice sound nothing wrong with stressing a engine once in a while.Lugging it causes more harm.
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>>Here's a 'highly-stressed' engine in action<<
Is that what's known as an Italian tune up!
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>> I subscribe to the philosophy that there's no substitute for cubic inches.
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Well if you're going down that road, a 357 Chevy would be nicer. :)
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Funnily enough, I've just been sent a leasing deal for a Camaro 6.2 V8. Only £579.99 plus VAT/month
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I suspect that these small engines will come into their own when, on this small, over-populated, fuel-starved island of ours, the national speed limit is reduced to 55mph.
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>> >> I subscribe to the philosophy that there's no substitute for cubic inches.
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>> Well if you're going down that road, a 357 Chevy would be nicer. :)
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Unfortunately I can't afford it and it won't fit in my garage.
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Like everyone else here, I've not driven one of these things, but let's try a little first-principles thinking and see if the intuitive objections still stand.
- To make a car go acceptably fast, we need to convert enough chemical energy from fuel into kinetic energy; the greater the mass of the car, the more energy we need.
- The traditional way to increase energy conversion has been to use bigger combustion chambers that hold more fuel-air mixture. This works, but at the price of requiring a larger amount of fuel just to keep the engine running.
- Super- or turbocharging gives us an alternative way to boost energy conversion by introducing more air, allowing the engine to burn more fuel, but only when required. The possible increase is huge - remember 1500hp 1.5-litre F1 engines in the 1980s? - limitation on this method has been the degree of increase obtainable before the power delivery becomes unacceptably uneven.
- Recent developments on turbocharger and engine management technologies have increased the rate of energy conversion achievable without compromising drivability, meaning that even a small-displacement engine can now convert energy at a rate sufficient to propel a heavy car.
So, if we accept those as statements of the should-be-obvious, it follows that this small engine should achieve good fuel economy when driven gently, since it has small cylinders to fill, and fewer of them to cause friction losses.
'Spirited' driving, on the other hand, involving high speeds and rapid acceleration, inevitably requires significantly more fuel, since the kinetic energy required increases exponentially with the speed, while the friction losses in the engine increase only linearly with engine speed. In other words, simple mathematics says that a small, high-boost engine will not produce startlingly low fuel consumption when thrashed, especially if it has a lot of weight to pull. But, since most ordinary cars are driven much more sedately, it may well be that a small engine will be a good choice for many users.
Thoughts? And yes, I know it's early, especially for a Saturday. I'm in Amsterdam again, this time between flights on my way home. I was hoping Europe might have warmed up while I've been away, but no such luck.
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It's -10 in the Fen this morning W de B!
Pat
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-14C in Stamford, confirmed by reading at RAF Wittering! My brass monkey is looking for missing parts!
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-13C here now it's got light!
Pat
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I Hope the hedgehogs and visiting cats are OK pat?
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Haven't seen the hedgehog since early december when we fed him up on cat food, but our cats are all propping radiators up this morning or still in bed.
Do we go all mean and turn the heat off while we go out for the day or do we feel sorry for them and leave it on?;)
Pat
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Ford Focus III - First Ford focus 1.0L review is out - Stuu
