Originally Posted By: earlyre
but you are missing the cool part of this thing.
...it's a 1.0L Turbo 3cyl engine, that on the conservative factory tune makes 123Bhp. and with a little tuning can easily go over 150Bhp.
while that may not sound like much today, just 30 yrs ago, Detroit was pumping out v8's that only made 150Bhp
You're missing the main accomplishment of this engine: Its a 3, so it should shake itself apart. They jumped through clever hoops just to partially compensate for the vibrating 3 cylinders. Its definitely NOT the power output thats interesting here, as they are just on par (power density hp/displacement) with about all the 2.0L 4's out there now.
Originally Posted By: earlyre
Ever since this engine came out, i've been waiting for cosworth, or someone else, to join 2 of 'em at the crank, and make a 2L twin turbo inline 6, that conservatively makes ~250bhp.
That would make no sense at all with this engine. They would have to ditch all the design enhancements to compensate for all that 3-cylinder shimmy and shake when an inline 6 needs very little and completely different approaches.
If you're mesmerized by the packaging efficiency, the real hero of that was and is the VW VR6, six cylinders with one head, crammed together very tightly.