So you are assuming the worst....longevity will may be hampered along with economy? As you said, taking a comment out of context doesn't work. Regardless of sales...many objective reviews speak of the lack of performance as being disappointing...others speak of the aesthetics being disappointing for a new platform. I'm glad they are selling. That's great. I'm just disappointed in it overall (aesthetics and performance are my 2 musts)...as are many others. Sales are great though.
Didn't take your quote out of context - just deleted the quote-within-quote.
But let's look deeper into this ... how will you increase the horsepower and /or Torque? By remapping the ECU to provide more power? Well that didn't will require more fuel. That then hits your economy and makes it one or two or more miles per gallon less.
Would you increase your compression ratio or the heat of the burn in the cylinder? That then impacts your longevity and reliability because seals that were made for one set of pressures are now having to deal with a different set of pressures.
Adding a turbo isn't necessarily the answer either, see the comment about people wanting less complex engines.
Let's not mistake Ford's use of turbos across the entire product line as something about performance. It's not. It is about MPGs and about gas savings and having smaller engines power bigger vehicles.
If Ford wanted to continue with high-power motors, we would see the 5-liter and larger engines under the hood of just about anything that could take it. But in this generation and in this era we need smaller Motors with equivalent power bands as to what they're replacing.
I've owned turbocharged engines, I've also owned Italian sports sedans, European luxury cars, monster Metal Trucks, high-performance muscle cars, and almost every other type of vehicle out there.
Turbos require more maintenance. There is no refuting that fact. You're adding a part which requires more maintenance. That can be again another reason somebody might not want it. No matter how well advanced and how reliable turbos are, they are still nothing much more than aware item. You have rubber seals and metal bearings that break down over time.
Multi valve engines require more maintenance. Why? Because you have more valves and therefore more actuators and more components to operate those more valves.
Yes, we would all love to have the most power and torque available for the greatest fuel economy available. But you cannot have all of one and all of the other without a compromise.
Subaru chose to remove a low-volume model and engine from the lineup. As I have said in another post maybe we'll be lucky and we'll see the Turbo from the Ascent mid move its way down to the Forester. But that may be a few years away at least until Subaru knows how well the Ascent will sell and how many motors they need to keep up with demand to sell that many Ascents.
