Why Four Cylinder Car Engines are Best for America

Motor Trend‘s Ed Sanchez takes on the growing trend by automakers to utilize four-cylinders across the model lineup of their respective brands.

Two main reasons are driving the paradigm shift. The first is car buyers’ acceptance of four cylinder engines. Sanchez interviewed various automaker representatives who all agree that the average car owner is focused on the “overall driving experience” than cylinder count. “The number of cylinders and displacement is not what most people are looking at anymore. It’s the torque and performance, and increasingly, fuel economy,” said Rainer Michel, vice president of product marketing for Volkswagen North America. Greg Johnson, manager at Ford Powertrain Engineering, agrees, and adds that refinement of the four-cylinder engine has blurred the line between it and its six-cylinder cousins. Technologies such as direct injection and turbochargers, as well as hybrid motors, allow four-cylinders to match the power of a V-6 yet maintain their famous fuel economy figures.

Government regulation (“Big Brother”) is the second contributor to the rise of four-cylinder motors; specifically, the Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE. This is the target mpg automakers must average with most of their vehicles or face stiff and very costly penalties. The federal government first implemented CAFE in reaction to the 1970 gas crisis and continues to refine the figures as a tool to reduce U.S. vulnerability to changing oil supplies, especially from the Middle East. Said Bruce Belzowski, an associate director and assistant research scientist at the Transportation Research Institute at the University of Michigan, “The manufacturers are driven in this case by CAFE regulations. I think they understand why the government is doing what they’re doing, to reduce the dependency on foreign oil. The U.S. economy is so tied to oil

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