Japanese Big Three Rush To Adopt Mainstream Engine Technology After Years Of Resistance

To me, blown engines will result in blown engines. To hear Ford tell, the Ecoboost in the Fusion is a miracle engine, but guess what? The old 2.5 4 cylinder gets better real-world MPG and will likely go many more miles.

I agree for the performance oriented customers - that Turbo and Supercharged engines are inherently more complicated and have more things that can go wrong. However - for the great majority of the public - who uses a car for transportation - and rarely floors the accelerator pedal - these engines might actually have advantages. You cannot look at the mileage of the car magazines whose testers are race drivers.

For the average driver - a car does not need much power to maintain a speed - it needs it only when accelerating. A turbo normally only spins up fully when you fully depress that gas pedal - which few of these drivers do - so they can actually beat the EPA estimates. I was greatly surprised when I bought my Chrysler Mini-van - and regularly beat the epa ratings by quite a bit (a minivan is not a hot rod to drive - and I am not inclined to drive it that way). A smaller engine with a turbo might do even better.

A lot of progress has been made on turbo engines in the last 15-20 years. Plenty of Mk V GTIs out there with well over 110k miles running the original motor...lots of other examples are out there as well.