The trick at Ford and GM is balancing better fuel economy and power with consumer desire for vroomThere is a new battle shaping up between General Motors (GM) and Ford (F) over engine superiority. And it's not the race for who can achieve the highest horsepower. With gas prices expected to stay above $3 per gallon and pressure on automakers to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the new battle is over which companies can shrink their engines' sizes and displacements without compromising driving performance or leaving power-hungry customers behind.
What does this really mean? Gas-thirsty V-8 engines in passenger cars and crossover SUVs will soon be an endangered species. This fall, Ford will launch the first in a series of smaller engines it is calling gas turbocharged direct-injection engines, or GTDI engines. These engines, the first of which will appear in the 2009 Lincoln MKS sedan, will achieve a 15% improvement in fuel economy over Ford's current engines. Over the next five years, Ford expects to put 500,000 vehicles equipped with the new engines on the road worldwide, with faster growth after that.
Automakers, especially U.S. companies, have been locked in a mindset of "bigger and faster is always better" for decades. Indeed, horsepower wars have been seen as a close cousin to the trend of bigger, thirstier SUVs. The crescendo of this thinking was perhaps reached in 2003 when GM showed a concept car at the Detroit Auto Show, the Cadillac Sixteen, which achieved 1,000 hp. In a stark reversal, GM said this month that it is scuttling its plans to build a new V-8 engine for its passenger cars and will instead, like Ford, focus on high-performance V-6s. Pickup trucks and SUVs will continue to offer V-8s.
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