Super-clean diesel engine for Honda

HERE?S a tip: Among the sleek concepts and alternative-power green mobiles on the Honda stand at the Geneva motor show in March, there will be a small cutaway car engine on a plinth. A very small engine.

Ignore it at your peril: this 1.6-litre turbodiesel is the first of what Honda says will be a series of ground-breaking new engines using what it calls, with typical Honda understatement, Earth Dreams Technology. And we?re not talking pie in the sky here; it will be on showroom floors in the recently-announced Civic hatch by late 2012 or early 2013. Honda says it plans to be the world leader in fuel-efficiency within three years and, as ambitious as that sounds, it is putting its engines where its mouth is.

This 1596cc turbodiesel will replace the current 2.2-litre oil-burner, first in the Civic and later in other Hondas. Not only that: thanks to a reduced compression ration and a beautifully cast, open-deck aluminium block, an improved cooling system, significantly lower internal friction and a very small, high-efficiency turbo, Honda claims that it will be the smallest, lightest and most efficient 1.6 diesel on the market. How efficient? Try 88kW at 4000rpm and 300Nm at 2000, at a cost of less than 100g/km of CO2.

Words: iol.co.za/motoring