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EcoBoost gives Ford Taurus a real SHO-stopper
By John Gilbert Last Updated: Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 09:06:38 PM ASHEVILLE, N.C. --- The question for the last few months is how could Ford Motor Company make it through the darkest era in U.S. automotives without the government bailout loans and bankruptcy needed for survival of both General Motors and Chrysler? It's not much of a secret that its business plan and technology make Ford better prepared for the future than its U.S. rivals. For Exhibit A, look no further than the 2010 Ford Taurus, and its muscular brother-in-arms, the SHO. The Taurus is thoroughly revised, and impressive enough. But it is in that high-performing, elite SHO model of the Taurus that Ford is introducing to the world its "EcoBoost" engine-building technique. The EcoBoost elicited some sneers from competitors and car-enthusiast editors alike in the past few months. If any cynics remain, the best way to hush then would be to plant their rear ends, one after the other, in the form-fitting bucket seat of a 2010 Taurus SHO, aim them in the proper direction, and tell them to stand on it. Tradition dies hard, and tradition in our power-crazed car industry has always said: "There's no substitute for cubic inches." Tradition also insisted that you can wrench more power out of an engine, but when you get 'way more power, you lose fuel economy, and, as a spinoff, you run into emission problems. But Ford's engineers have hit the trifecta with their new EcoBoost engine. They substituted technology for massive cubic inches and power-hungry designs, and they attained high power levels with responsible fuel efficiency, while also reducing emissions greatly. The EcoBoost engine concept is the sort of thing we might expect from Honda, or Audi, or BMW -- which puts Ford in very impressive company. The numbers on EcoBoost tell the story. Ford's basic 3.5-liter V6, which is in all the basic Taurus models, has impressive-enough numbers at 263 horsepower and 249 foot-pounds of torque, with EPA fuel estimates of 18 city and 28 highway. The EcoBoost, with all sorts of strengthened components, plus direct injection and twin turbocharging, develops a stunning 365 horsepower at 5,500 RPMs, and a plateau at the peak of 350 foot-pounds of torque that comes on at a mere 1,500 RPMs and holds steady all the way to 5,250 RPMs. That is positively Audi-like, using turbocharging and computerized engine management to stretch the torque peak from idle speed all the way into the peak horsepower revs. The power and torque is so potent that Ford sells the SHO only with all-wheel drive, because that much torque in a front-wheel drive platform would rip up the front half-shafts. As chief engineer Pete Reyes said, "It has the thrust of a V8, and the thirst of a V6." Ford is rightfully proud of the technology, and engineers insist they're just barely scratching the surface. The technique can also be applied to other engines -- any engines -- and Ford claims that by 2013, 90 percent of Ford's engines will have EcoBoost available. It will also power the Lincoln MKS right off, and the new Flex will follow, among others. The system can also work on 4-cylinder engines. As for the introduction, we paired up to drive the Taurus from Knoxville, Tenn., to Asheville, N.C., and it was fun and impressive, looping and curving through the Blue Ridge Mountains. The big but agile Taurus easily handled every challenge with the frisky 3.5-liter V6. Only a couple years old, it's a dual-overhead-camshaft engine with more than adequate its 263 horsepower and 249 foot-pounds of torque are more than adequate. The car bristles with features and safety equipment, and its attention to detail includes sound-deadening care and close-tolerance fit and finish. Very impressive suspension settings make the stiff chassis compliant over rough pavement, but firmly flat around the tightest turns. That engine and suspension are housed in the three "normal" models, beginning with the SE entry-level at $25,995, the mid-range SEL, which adds upgrade options such as all-wheel drive, rain-sensing wipers, push-button start, and a potent Sony audio system, and starts at $27,995, and the top model, the Limited, which adds adaptive lights, blind-spot detection, and really reaches for a slot in the entry-luxury category, starting at $31,995. The information on all the features, plus the drive itself, filled the exhausted brains of all of us on the automotive media side, so Ford officials fed us dinner and prevented us from being over-exposed with any SHO talk. Until the next morning, after breakfast. The SHO will cost $37,995, which is a healthy jump from the other models, but its components justify the increase. Living up to the heritage of its predecessor, the new SHO has every steering, handling and suspension element improved and strengthened, including heavier stabilizer bars, stiffer springs, improved steering, better roll stability, and the six-speed automatic transmission, with its steering wheel paddles, beefed up to make rev-matching downshifts "better than BMW," Reyes said. There are subtle style touches to set apart the SHO, such as the luster nickel on the grille, and the wide-spread dual exhausts, instead of the dual pipes on one side, plus the tiny "SHO" emblems. A rear spoiler also is tastefully tiny, making the SHO a sleeper. The big news, though, remains the EcoBoost -- Ford's preferred weapon to challenge fuel-efficiency and power requirements of the future. For that, Brett Hinds, the chief engineer on the EcoBoost's advanced engine design, took over. "With this collection of hardware," Hinds said, "we got more power, more miles per gallon, and less CO2 emissions. We selected two partners -- Honeywell-Garrett for the turbochargers, and Bosch for the high-pressure direct injection -- as established component manufacturers. And we're making the engines at the Cleveland engine factory. "We took the base 3.5, and added variable valve-timing, 10-1 compression, oil-cooled pistons, high-alloy crankshaft and connecting rods, direct injection, and the turbochargers, which we ran at 170,000 RPMs at 1,740 degrees. We use active and passive water cooling to prevent coking of oil, or turbo damage."
Direct injection is a hidden asset. It doesn't seem as significant as, say, overhead-cams compared to pushrods, or fuel-injection compared to carburetors, but it makes a tremendous difference. Normal fuel injection combines the air-fuel mixture into tubes that feed all the cylinders when the gas pedal is stepped on. Direct injection precisely feeds each cylinder separately with a perfect dosage of air-fuel mix, at a controlled temperature and extremely high pressure. The much more volatile mixture achieves much more complete burning, and therefore improved power, improved fuel economy, and lower emissions. Despite its capability for high-RPM running, 98 percent of all driving is done below 3,000 RPMs. So Ford challenged specific rivals for power and economy. Ford aimed directly at the Pontiac G8 with its 6-liter V8, at Chevrolet's 5.3-liter V8, and at the Dodge Charger's RT model with its 5.7-liter Hemi. The EcoBoost ran with them for power, and delivered clearly better fuel economy, with preliminary estimates of 25. The most interesting graph I saw was a comparison between the EcoBoost 3.5 and the normal 3.5 at each incremental RPM level. Of course, the normal engine had better fuel economy figures most of the way, but as revs built, there were certain levels where the efficiency of the direct injection gave the EcoBoost a slight edge in miles per gallon. "We promised we could increase fuel economy 20 percent, and we delivered a 25-percent improvement," said Hinds. "And this is real-world fuel economy. We got better miles per gallon than competitive V8s, even with cylinder deactivation, where they were running on four cylinders. We showed 20 percent better miles per gallon, and 15 percent less emissions." Ford first built the Taurus as a revolutionary rounded shape in 1986, and it with the public, and soon became the largest-selling car in the U.S. To add a dose of performance, Ford sent its V6 engine over to Yamaha in Japan and let them rebuild it especially for the SHO, which stood for Super High Output. It was a high-performing, front-wheel-drive rocket. When Ford quit making the Taurus, they made a major miscue when they brought it back, and called it the "Five Hundred." One year later, Ford renamed it the Taurus. In its revival, it was built solidly on the superb Volvo S80/XC90 platform, and housed an enormous back seat and a trunk large enough, I wrote, to be rented as an efficiency apartment. This is the first redesign of the revitalized Taurus, and it strikes a handsome pose from the front, and front corner. It is impressive enough from the side, too, although my first impression is that the rear end lacks the flair of the front. Maybe the designers were hurried, because the car originally was aimed at being a 2011 model, but it was rushed to come out as a 2010. But since the engineers weren't rushed, but had the EcoBoost ready to go, why wait? With it, the new Taurus will give rivals fits trying to come up with a "SHO-stopper." |
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