No 2-cylinder engines for VAG

Volkswagen has rejected the idea of utilising 2-cylinder engines in its forthcoming city-car.

Volkswagen has been the head of down-sizing engines with its 3-cylinder petrol and diesel units. Ulrich Hackenberg, R&D chief executive, thinks downsizing is now on the verge of its limits, despite Fiat’s new 2-cylinder TwinAir engine.

“Improvements can now only be made in performance and economy, not in making the engines any smaller. Instead, the Up will make use of three-cylinder engines that will really advance the technology and make strong use of it”, he said.

“I’ve seen two-cylinder cars running,” he said, “but from a production point of view it’d be very hard.

“Even three-cylinder engines are very expensive as they’re not as smooth or refined as we’d like. But we’re not going to abandon them,” he added