The world’s largest maker of petrol engines, Honda, didn’t take easily to making diesels. Despite clear indications and global trends, the Japanese motorcycle and car manufacturer shied away from ‘dirty oil burners’ for years. Honda culture, you see, was all about petrol engines. Built on the bedrock of motorsport, high-revving petrol engines and driving pleasure, diesels were an anathema.
But the skyrocketing price of fuel and a loss of marketshare in certain areas forced Honda’s hand.
Honda’s 1.5-litre i-DTEC motor for India uses the same architecture as the 1.6 (recently launched in Europe) and comes with the same sophisticated hardware to reduce weight and friction. The only differences are that the Indian version has a smaller, fixed-geometry turbo (FGT) and no Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF), which is not needed in India. The 1498cc motor shares its pistons with the 1.6 (the bore is the same) and hence it is only the stroke that has been reduced to bring the capacity below the critical 1.5-litre mark (to qualify as a small car engine and gain excise benefits). Honda claims this engine is the lightest diesel in its class and a host of weight-saving features have been used, like a thin-walled aluminium block, an aluminium head and lightweight cast-iron cylinder liners.
Because it's an all-aluminium diesel, significant countermeasures were needed to cut down on noise. Honda has stiffened the crankcase and opted for liquid-filled engine mounts to reduce vibrations, but despite these tweaks, the engine remains is far from the most silent in its class.
Also of interest is the fact that the engine has been designed to accommodate a variable-geometry turbo (VGT), so you can expect a more powerful version of this engine to power the next-generation City too.
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