The good die young. This simple statement happens all the time in our lives. The superb, eco-friendly, very tractable 1.4 turbocharged and supercharged engine that Volkswagen calls the ‘Twincharger’ may die a premature death.
This fabulous engine was VW’s answer to make smaller engines as powerful as ones with a larger capacity. People used to say that there’s no substitute for cubic inches and this little Twincharger has made the playing field a little more even for the small boys. VW were actually pretty confident of this little engine that they plonked one in the Scirocco 1.4TSI and in the Polo GTI. Unfortunately, VW now claims that these babies are expensive to produce and they are seriously considering replacing them with one that has a single turbocharger.
What they’re basically doing is replacing an engine that has been crowned “Engine of the Year” both in 2009 and 2010. I suppose real technical progress has to suffer as a result of the bean counters located in VW’s accounting department complaining about added costs. Some Smart Alec there must have voiced their discontent that plonking in an extra item in an engine increases costs. Imagine if they produced 100,000 1.4TSI engines and if the cost of adding a supercharger will cost VW $100 per unit that would mean ordering $10,000,000 worth of supercharger. So if they produced a 1.4 with only a turbocharger instead of two types of forced induction machinery, they’d save a whole lot of cash. Of course it makes perfect sense, but you don’t get to see something different and unique powering certain VWs anymore. And that’s pretty sad news to me.
So what does VW do to comfort us poor souls who are enthralled with new and innovative technology for the cars we see on our roads? It tells the chaps at Autocar (whose sources first brought forward this piece of news) that turbocharging technology has now advanced a fair bit and they believe that they can achieve the same performance figures that the Twincharger makes with their latest Direct-injection engines coupled with the latest turbocharging technology. I do not doubt the fact that VW can make this possible, but I just think that it is a slightly traditional and therefore slightly boring approach to engine development.
Don’t you just hate the people in accounting? This is just like British Airways stopping the Concorde from flying due to costs. Imagine the fact that people in the 1970s and 1980s can cross the Atlantic ocean faster that they can do so now. Imagine us motorheads losing another unique piece of engine technology. This piece of news isn’t as epic as the Concorde not flying, but it is sad news indeed.
