Ford’s award-winning 1,0-litre, three-cylinder EcoBoost engine could be set to grow. Blue Oval engineers claim that there’s still room for an appreciable hike in displacement and power – could this development lead to a three-cylinder ST model in the firm’s future line-up?
Speaking with AutoExpress, Ford’s head of gasoline engine development, Andrew Fraser, has the following to say:
“We have a maximum capacity per cylinder of 500cc [for the current 3-cylinder EcoBoost unit], so a 1.5-litre engine is certainly possible. In growing markets there are incentives for certain sizes of engines, so in Brazil they want a 1.0-litre engine, in India it’s 1.2 and in China it’s 1.5 – the EcoBoost engine could be all of those.”
The idea would be to provide different capacity EcoBoost engines to various markets according to their power requirements and emissions legislation.
Ford’s engineers have managed to stress test a highly tuned version of the 1,0-litre EcoBoost to an output of 164 kW – an exercise that Ford themselves have admitted would be potentially exceeding the bounds of efficiency and reliability.
Fraser claims that, with increased displacements, the 3-cylinder EcoBoost could plausibly develop a still-impressive output of around 150 kW – essentially mirroring that of the recently revealed 1,0-litre EcoBoost Formula Ford racecar.
With such a development on the cards, we could well see the first 3-cylinder ST model emerge in the near future. The new Fiesta ST runs a 1,6-litre EcoBoost unit developing 132 kW and 240 N.m, but it could also be a viable vessel for a tuned, higher-capacity 3-cylinder EcoBoost unit.
