| Top engines
honoured (January 1997) Two very different motorcar engines,
both currently available in Australia, have been
praised by authoritative US magazine Ward’s
Engine and Vehicle Technology Update.
They are Volkswagen’s
direct injection diesel engine, offered in
Australia in the VW Golf GL Tdi, and Mazda’s
"Miller cycle" V6, offered here in the
Mazda Eunos 800M.
VW’s 1.9 litre
turbocharged diesel was praised by Ward’s
for its driveability and "remarkably
frugal" fuel consumption (see news archive:
3.3L/100km - on cooking oil !), with Ward’s
managing editor, Bill Visnic, describing it as
"the future of automotive power
plants".
By contrast, Mazda’s
Miller-cycle engine actually uses an engineering
concept developed in the late 1940s by American
engineer, Ralph Miller, for use in ships’
engines.
The Miller cycle varies the
engine’s valve timing to effectively add a
non-compression stroke and transform it into a
‘five cycle engine", delivering power
equivalent to engines 1.5 times its size but with
the fuel economy of a much smaller engine.
VW’s turbo- diesel is
the first diesel to pass Ward’s demanding
criteria, while it is the third time in
succession that Mazda’s Miller-cycle engine
has been honoured.
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