Hello all. General Motors has begun testing turbo fours in their large cars (reference here). This is not an abomination. Actually, VW has been doing the same thing for years. They have their own turbo four used in their GTI, Jetta GLI, Passat, EOS and the upcoming Tiguan. That's pretty much their whole stable. So what's wrong with that?
GM has used their Ecotec turbo in RWD applications for the Solstice GXP and Sky RedLine. They've also used the Ecotec turbo in FWD applications for the HHR SS and Cobalt SS turbo. The engineering work is done. It is possible.
What remains to be seen is how to market these cars ("impression management" as some say). What is the image projected by these specific applications. A turbo four in a cushy sedan? A turbo four in a pony car? Am I insane? Definitely not.
The Ecotec base was already tested in a race engine application with up to 1000 hp. That's not chump change to me. The tunability of this engine is what draws people in, just like the VW 1.8L and 2.0L turbo fours. Oh, and in case you didn't know, the Ariel Atom 2 kit car importable to the United States can be had with ... that's right, an Ecotec turbo four.
The marketing guys have their work cut out for them, but they just have to know how to present it. They'd have to show the pedigree of that family of engines, then it won't look so strange in big cars.
Well, what do you think?
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