The Fiat Panda and the award-winning 1.3 litre diesel engine

Beauty contests nowadays are a dime a dozen. Be they local affairs or even the big kahunas like the Miss Universe and Miss World pageants, millions across the globe love watching these shows and betting on their favourites. Even men have climbed on to the bandwagon with several contests that single out the hottest hunk of the lot. Today I will be focusing on a pageant too ? but one of an entirely different kind. And yes, this one goes beyond the surface to find the beauty within.

While almost every country has a Car of the Year award, usually awarded by the journalists of that country, there?s another award that?s also car-related ? the International Engine of the Year award. This award recognises under the bonnet engineering excellence and has been around for a number of years. In fact, the 2005 winners were announced just a couple of months ago. A panel of 56 motoring journalists from 26 countries, including India does the judging. The judges are tasked with finding out which cars have engines that offer the best in driveability, performance, economy and refinement. The cars (engines) are categorised according to capacity ? under 1 litre, 1-1.4-litre, 1.4-1.8-litre, 1.8-2-litre, 2-2.5-litre, 2.5-3 litre, 3-4 litre and above 4 litre. This makes it eight categories in all. In addition, cars are awarded for Best Overall Performance, Best Fuel Efficiency and Overall International Engine of the Year.

To qualify for inclusion as a candidate for the awards, an engine must have been housed in a car that was on sale in more than one country on June 1, 2005. The same applies for the Fuel Economy award as well as the criterion that the engine has to have been designed expressly for better fuel economy. For the Performance award, the engine has to be either designed specifically for performance or for powering a car intended for sporting fun. The International Engine of the Year is selected from the winners of each class.

Judges use their subjective driving impressions and their technical knowledge to take into account engine characteristics like fuel economy, noise, smoothness, performance and driveability. Each judge has 25 points to allot to their five favourite engines with the stipulation that the top spot has to be clearly defined, with no ties between two or more engines.

At the end of this year?s deliberations, the results were quite revealing. The Best Fuel economy award went to Toyota?s Hybrid Synergy Drive engine. Powering the Toyota Prius, this, as the name suggests, is a hybrid 1.5-litre engine. The overall fuel consumption achieved by it was 4.2 litres of petrol consumed for a 100km or 23.8km per litre. This was combined with very low levels of emissions. All this was not at the cost of performance either as the electric motor helps the petrol engine to take the Prius from 0-100kph in just 10.9 seconds. This engine also won the Best Engine award in the 1.4-litre to 1.8-litre category.

BMW won six awards for Germany and four of these went to one engine ? the new 5-litre V10 engine doing duty in the M5 and the M6 sports models. This engine was born out of technology derived from BMW?s Formula One programme. For the Best New Engine award, the BMW unit beat competition from the 4.3-litre unit from Ferrari?s F430, the 3.3-litre unit from Toyota?s Lexus RX400h, the Porsche 911?s 3.8-litre, BMW?s own 3-litre twin-turbo diesel as in the 535d and the Honda?s Accord 3-litre Hybrid. It won the Best Performance award by beating heavyweights like the Ferrari F430 engine, the AMG-Mercedes 6-litre bi-turbo unit used in the SL and CL65, the Chevrolet 6-litre V8 as used in the Pontiac GTO as well as the Chrysler/Dodge 6.1-litre used in the Chrysler 300C and the Dodge Magnum. It also won the Best Over-Four-Litre Engine award. All this then combined to win the unit the accolade of Best International Engine of the Year.

The winner of the 1-litre to 1.4-litre class is of particular interest to India ? the 1.3-litre diesel engine jointly developed by Fiat and GM. Several things worked in its favour. Firstly, it is a lightweight engine thanks to its aluminium cylinder head and block. It makes a more than decent amount of power and torque ? 70bhp and 170Nm respectively. This engine is not short on technology either. It uses Multijet technology developed by Fiat, which uses electronic controls to divide the main injection into several smaller ones to achieve quieter combustion, reduced emissions and increased performance. It is a reactive system too, in that it tailors itself according to the engine?s requirements at any given moment. This engine overcame opposition from Honda?s 1.3-litre IMA, the PSA/Ford Diesel 1.4-litre, Volkswagen?s 1.4-litre FSI, Toyota?s Diesel 1.4-litre and lastly Daihatsu?s 1.3-litre unit.

It?s a small engine too and that allows it to be installed in a number of cars like the Fiat Panda, the Opel Corsa and the Suzuki Ignis. In fact it is just this which makes it of particular interest to India. Currently a Polish-built 1251cc unit, the 1.3-litre diesel engine in question will be built by Maruti in India very shortly. Which means that Maruti could be in the enviable position of selling GM and Fiat?s own engine back to them!

Fiat is trying to regain a foothold in India, and the introduction of this engine along with aggressive marketing and tom-tomming the fact that it is an award-winning engine may just help the Italians overcome the Japanese onslaught here. Fiat has been notoriously slow to adapt and change in India but this is one time the company really needs to move fast if it plans to stick on in the country.