Overhaul for Vauxhall engines

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Vauxhall is embarking on a complete renewal of its engine line-up between 2013 and 2016.

The highlights are a new 1.6-litre turbodiesel and a sub-100g/km three-cylinder petrol unit. Three new families of engines are coming, the key one being the MDE (medium diesel engine) — a 1.6-litre turbodiesel with a power output of between 100 and 140bhp — and on sale in 2013.

The MDE will replace higher-power 1.3 CDTi powerplants and the evergreen 1.7 CDTi, the most popular Astra engine in the UK.

“We are investing heavily in new powertrains ready for Euro 6 and to ensure we stay top of the class,” says Rita Forst, GM’s European engineering boss.

All the new petrol engines will feature direct injection. The SGE (small gasoline engine) will range

in capacity from 1.0 to 1.4 litres, while the MGE (medium gasoline engine) will be a 1.6.

The 1.0-litre unit will have three cylinders and will power the Junior hatch, an upmarket supermini aimed

at the Mini and Fiat 500, although it won’t be ready for the Junior’s launch at the Paris show next autumn.

Instead, the triple will be added to the range about a year after the Junior’s launch, when the SGE family goes into production.

All three new engine families will be built at a new £420 million factory in Hungary, capable of building 500,000 engines a year.

Vauxhall is also raising the power output of the 2.0-litre Family B diesel engine, adding a second turbo to boost peak output to 200bhp in its most powerful version.

The Family II petrol engine will get internal improvements to boost power, efficiency and emissions and be on sale in late 2015, ready for EU6.

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Good news! Britain's building more engines

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Yes, Jaguar Land Rover is going to build a brand new factory in Wolverhampton that will, in three or four years, start churning out all-new engines. And this says a lot about where the company expects to be in half a decade's time.

The factory is to build four-cylinder engines - lots of them. It's costing £355 million to build, and will employ 750 people.

Jaguar Land Rover's highly sophisticated V8 motors, and the brand-new related V6 it showed in the C-X16 at the Frankfurt Motor Show, will continue to be built by Ford in Wales. So there will still be fast luxurious top-range Jags and Range Rovers.

But the company wants to expand, and the significant volume growth will be done by moving to smaller cars with smaller (but still fairly powerful) engines. These are the engines that will be made in Wolverhampton. BMW, Audi and Mercedes are going the same way - more smaller cars, and more big cars with smaller engines.

We've already seen this with the new Range Rover Evoque. All its engines are four-cylinders, and yet it's a vehicle that can convincingly sell for £50k once you add the options.

Jaguar will go the same way. In three years' time it will launch a rival for the BMW 3-series. A year or so after that, there will be a compact Jaguar crossover - even more road-biased than the Evoque, obviously, to make sure there isn't internal cannibalisation.

Jaguar Land Rover is actually in a better position than most luxury makers to launch four-cylinder engines, because its cars will be light. They're working on something called the ‘premium lightweight architecture', an aluminium structure that shaves at least 150kg off steel rivals. Lighter cars are easier to propel, so they can be more economical with the same performance using a smaller engine. This lightweight architecture starts big, with the 2012 Range Rover and 2013 Range Rover Sport, but it can be adapted and shrunk right down to the level of these relatively small Jags.

We know these engineers can design great powerplants: look at the current V8. But it's a huge investment by their owners, Tata of India, to commit to designing a family of new four-cylinder engines, and to making it in the UK.

When the company was first taken over, people talked with grave concern about jobs being moved offshore. They needn't have worried.

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