Am I the only one that thinks they photoshopped a Ferrari front end onto a Model Y body? (Not the exact image that I found in my May 2019 Car and Driver)
With some off-the-shelf software package from a big name? That's barely tuning. My original points about the 1.0 - too little displacement, and the exhaust manifold is cast into the cylinder head so that replacing one means replacing the other, for an engine which is not likely to attract aftermarket versions of either - still stand. If you have some skill with a welding rig you can fabricate headers for any engine, but not so much for that one. I would also like to add that with such a physically-small engine, there can't be much room to bore out, and I'd be skeptical of cylinder wall/block strength as well. The ST will probably be better (actually replaceable exhaust manifolds, for one), but with the current state of (over-) regulation it's extremely difficult anyway to build a car which is truly driver- or tuner-friendly.
Eeehh.... grille bothers me more than it should, like with the normal ST. Other than that, it looks.... meh.
This year's rental car is a 2019 Ford Fusion. It's an SE car, oddly optioned, base 1.5L Ecoboost engine. It's too heavy, the seats don't keep you in place (but they're comfy!), the dead pedal sits too far forward, the steering wheel sits too far back... BUT ABOVE ALL, THE MOST SINNING SIN... It can't get out of it's own way. I'm sorry, you can think what you want, but 181HP in a 3,800lb car simply isn't enough. I almost got hit by a truck because I put my foot down, then it just made a whole bunch of dismal food blender noise and went absolutely nowhere. I feel really bad for the people that don't buy at least the 2.0L car, the 1.5L is freaking hopeless.
The problem is that cars are becoming too heavy. My car has 200HP and it is more than enough because the car itself weighs less than 3,400 lbs. I would argue that torque is more important in most situations, and that anything less than a 3.0 liter V6 is not enough for cars weighing more than 3,500 lbs. The 3800cc V6 in my car makes 225 lb-ft at relatively low RPMs, allowing it to speed up quickly compared to modern I4 cars.
I'm going to correct you. The most sinning sin is the fact that a midsize car weighs 3800 pounds in the first place. If it weighed what a midsize should, that 181 horsepower would probably be more than enough to make it scoot.
needs more low end torque, you have very little until the turbo spools up because of how small that engine is and the setup could probably be better
It must be cheaper to make stuff heavier. Weight can also give certain suspension characteristics which may be desirable, especially in place of fitting higher quality (>$) dampers. But as you mention, it hurts most of everything else. From what I can tell, the current trend over the past 2-3 years with many vehicles is to go lighter, in order to get better fuel economy results, so at least that is something.
What part of the powerband is that torque in? I am guessing it is probably around 3,000-4,000 RPM which isn't really used in normal driving conditions.
Turbo cars are known for low end torque. I don't know what it comes on, but considering I was WOT to red line, I'm genuinely interested if torque ever actually happens or not.
