Volvo has boldly announced V8 motors will become dinosaurs as vehicle manufacturers more and more switch their interest to more gas effective smaller-capacity engines, these types of as four-cylinders.
The announcement comes simply months before Volvo will embark on a multi-million pound investment to enter the V8 Supercars racing category in Australia.
Talking at the release of its brand new household of diesel and petrol four-cylinder engines – which will change a range of four, six and eight-cylinder engines for the Swedish vehicle maker – the brand’s vice president of powertrain engineering made the controversial declaration that V8s had been a dying type.
“There’s therefore much energy they will turn V8 motors into dinosaurs,” stated Derek Crabbin a video clip presentation, referring to the brand new turbocharged Volvo four-cylinder engines.
Volvo automobile Australia supervisor Matt Braid defended the obvious conflict between a four-cylinder-only motor strategy as well as the move to enter V8 racing by saying the ambitious competition system had been really separate to the brand’s change towards a brand new range of more gas effective motors for its road vehicles.
“The four-cylinder motor strategy is for manufacturing cars, the V8 engine architecture is the ticket to entry to V8 Supercars as the leading racing category in Australia,” said Braid. “We’re using the automobile racing, we’re not using the motor racing.
“We really a great deal desire to draw the line: manufacturing road vehicle motor versus making a bespoke competition motor out of a previous manufacturing V8 motor to satisfy the category laws.”
Whenever requested whether V8 Supercars racing should drop the V8 tag and permit various motor designs Braid had been guarded in his response but stated: “in future, possibly yes”.
“It’s just normal whenever you’re on community record announcing your brand new four-cylinder engine strategy … you are likely to have some concerns requested [internally] about the [V8 Supercar] series.
“As soon as the concerns were asked and when they were answered it had been really clear they’re not in conflict with each various other.”
While numerous brands have actually predicted that product sales of V8s will drop as four-cylinder motors continue to deliver more energy and become more easily acknowledged, none has gone as far to phone it a dinosaur.
Since well as the V8 being synonymous with the popular Mount Panorama competition track at Bathurst – and touring car racing generally – the many legendary Australian-made vehicles have actually been driven by V8 motors. They consist of the Ford Falcon GTHO and Holden Monaro, since well as more current iterations of the Falcon and Commodore.
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For Holden, more than a quarter of Commodores sold are driven by a V8.
Simply this week Porsche revealed its high-tech 918 Spyder supercar, which teams a V8 motor with an electric drivetrain for one of the quickest manufacturing vehicles ever produced.
Various other brands – including Mazda – have actually formerly resisted carrots to enter the V8 Supercars championship partially on the grounds it didn’t fit with the brand’s wider advertising message and its push to smaller capability motors.
Despite the dinosaur forecast, Volvo qualified its responses by saying V8 motors will nevertheless play a niche part in large overall performance vehicles going ahead.
The engineer accountable for the brand new four-cylinder Volvo engines, Jorgen Brynne, stated there will “always be a niche” for some V8 engines.
“There will constantly be a niche for huge motors for some unique cars but the volume is reduced these days and will most likely be also reduced in the future,” stated Brynne. “There will constantly be some Ferraris, perhaps some extremely expensive BMWs and [Mercedes-Benz] AMG versions and so-on.
“With our [higher performance] T6 [four-cylinder] we believe we are near to V8 performance. And whenever we make some electrification we will absolutely be in the V8 location and with gas usage that’s not in the V8 location.”