Heard on NPR yesterday.

[rwork]

Talking about GM closing plants around the country.People are walking away from new Pickup trucks and SUV's because of $4.00 gas.
Now it seems GM has a new Turbo-Charged 4- cylinder engine that gets well over 40 mpg. They are rushing into production.
They can do it without the hybrid technology all along it seems.
But as long as they could sell us the $50,000 cars and trucks gas guzzlers and bush* giving the tax credits on Hummers they were happy.

[hokies4ever]

1. Turbo-charged 4-cylinder engine AND 40 mpg?

Does it fly too? :rofl:

I've gotta see a link to believe this. :patriot:

[flamin lib]

4. VW has been making a turbo deisel that gets 40 mpg for years.

Not the most exciting thing to drive from 0-60 but it did get 40 mpg.

[Locrian]

5. huh?

My 1999 turbo 4 cylinder VW (135 hp) gets about 36-38 mpg highway (manual).

It's pretty easy to get 40 mpg out of a car if you dont make it weight a ton and have a ton of HP. Manual transmission helps too, esp since you loose a LOT of weight. And turbo technology has come a LONG way.

[hokies4ever]

6. It just sounds counterintuitive is all I was saying

"turbo" sounds like one of those big heavy trucks.

[Bigmack]

7. Not an engineer...

but I believe turbo means that the diesel/air mixture that detonates in the cylinder gets an extra shot of air to hype power and torque.

[flamin lib]

2. It's a math problem. To make the same $$ with a small car

you have to sell a brazillion of them. GM was making about $7k/Suburban and the dealer made a lot of profit too. To do the same with small cars you have to sell three times as many.

The problem is with the short sighted business plans that can't see past next quarter. I worked for a branch manager who would ship everything he could in the last week of the month including stuff scheduled for the first week of next month. We spent the first week of the next month taking stuff back that arrived at our customers early. Lather, rinse, repeat month after month. It never occurred to him that by shipping next months deliveries early he was draining next month's numbers.

That's the way all US businesses think.

[Mr. Blonde]

3. Kind of hard to blame them

and certainly some trickle down in that the workers and stuff get paid better.

They don't get much of a return on the kind of cars a 4 cylinder goes in. At least not the ones they have made. Those were all loss leaders.

The times though, they are a-changin', I have a feeling we will be seeing this engine in a nicer class of vehicle.