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We prefer naturally aspirated, high compression engines but the truly power hungry need more.

Debates rage daily among those who prefer turbos to superchargers and vice versa. The turbo camp is willing to put up with softer throttle response for the kick of a turbo coming on line and downright silly power levels you can achieve, while the supercharger crowd prefers the more linear torque delivery and sharper throttle response.

Ideally you’d have a supercharger to boost response at lower speeds and a turbo to take over as revs rise… That’s what VW’s done for the engine in the new Golf 1.4 FSI . Their goal: to shrink the engine from the class standard 1.6-2.2L size down to 1.4 liters. You get the power you’d expect from the larger engine with better emissions and running smoothness (fours are smoothest at smaller displacements) – and none of the nasty lag and surge of the 1.8T or (to a lesser extent) the new 2.0T FSI motors…

UPDATE Here’s more info from VW’s UK website…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 5th, 2005 at 12:42 am and is filed under Volkswagen, technical.