You know something that’s happened fairly recently in the automotive world that has been largely overlooked? Three cylinder engines have gotten more mainstream than ever before – well, at least in America, in some times and places, like Eastern Europe between the 1950s and 1990s they were the most common type of engine – and they’re now in bigger cars than ever before. In fact, I think when it comes to mass-produced three-cylinder passenger cars, we now have the biggest one on the market ever. Do you know what car that is? I think I do!
Three-cylinder engines have never been as popular as four-bangers, even at small displacements, because they’re inherently unbalanced in the “rocking couple” way– that is the cylinders on either side of the middle one don’t have symmetrical velocities. There may be other reasons, but the need for balance shafts and that sort of engineering definitely is a factor.
Still, the three did find use, especially in two-stroke form, as pioneered by Germany’s DKW, with variations of their three-cylinder two-stroke ending up in countless Wartburgs, Saabs, Barkas vans and trucks, and some motorcycles, and more. For small cars, threes have always had the advantage of economy, something perhaps best known in America thanks to the Geo Metro (which is actually a Suzuki Cultus), the hypermiler’s dream car.
But now we’re in a sort of three-cylinder renaissance, with lots of major automakers having some kind of new, advanced three, and with these engines ending up in cars far different than the usual Eastern Bloc socialism-wagon or some little Japanese econobox. Now they’re appearing in SUVs and even supercars.
So, what’s the biggest three-banger out there? To help figure that out, I made this chart:
This, of course, does not cover all the three-bangers out there, but tries to give a decent representative sampling. Small ones are plentiful, and vary pretty dramatically, from little sports cars like the Saab Sonett to Japanese Kei cars to the ubiquitous-in-India Maruti-Suzuki, to the little Smarts, to modern BMW-made Minis.
The middle section has all those wonderful DKWs that live on through Audi, at least in the logo, along with the Eastern Bloc’s most Volvo-ish car, the Wartburg, and then those Saabs before the company switched to the four-stroke V4 from the Ford Taunus.
The Big Boys are the most recent ones; there’s the hybrid BMW i8 which was one of the first near-supercars to give a triple-piston engine a go, when paired with some electric motors, a formula that was taken and absolutely run with by Koenigsegg for their Gemera. That three-cylinder engine, called the Tiny Friendly Giant, displaces two liters, has twin turbos, cam-less valves, and somehow makes 600 horsepower!
Here, let’s geek out about that for a moment:
Damn!
Okay, back to sizes of three-cylinder cars, though. Both the BMW i8 and Gemera are long and wide and low, and if you multiply their lengths, widths, and heights to get the volume of space they take up, they both come to a volume of around 700,000 cubic inches. That’s a big block of space, but there are bigger three-bangers.
Take the Buick Envista, which our own Matt Hardigree reviewed back in March; that’s an SUV with a 1.2-liter three, and is 183 inches long, 72 inches wide, and 61 inches tall. That gives us an overall volume of 803,736 cubic inches! That’s a lot!
But there’s one more Big Three out there: the Ford Bronco Sport. This is the car that got me thinking about all of this from the beginning because it is a car that I suspect most of its buyers do not even realize is a three-cylinder. It just doesn’t feel like one. So how big is it?
Well, the Bronco Sport is 173 inches long, 74 inches wide, and 71 inches tall (with the roof rack); that gives us a total volume of 908,942 cubic inches, which I believe makes it the biggest three-cylinder car available now, and, I think, likely ever!
I know there are big diesel trucks that have some massive displacement three-cylinder engines, and of course those are larger, but we’re talking mass-market passenger cars here.
So, if you were wondering, my conclusion is that the Ford Bronco Sport is the biggest three-cylinder-powered mass-marker passenger car ever made!
No go forth with this newfound knowledge and win some bar bets or something!
What about Barkas B1000 – Eastern Germany’s minibus that seated up to 8 people. It is powered by a 1-litre liquid-cooled two-stroke straight-three engine, making 42 to 44hp. It was more than 4,5 m long had curb weight u to 1715 kg and payload of
625-1050 kg (1,000 kg = 2,200 lb). So – a bit more than Bronco Sport. It was quite popular in eastern block counties.
Here is wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barkas_B_1000
Doesn’t it count?
TBF 8 east Germans was like 2 1/2 Americans today.
Renault sticks their 1.2 hybrid thing into many vehicles, largest might be the new Espace, 185 inches? PSA, sorry, Stellantis likewise. The Peugeot 5008 is quite large MPV disguised as SUV and the puretech has been fit into most of the range.
Mondeo ecoboost was mentioned already, but Volvo had a 3 cyl version for V60/S60 and also XC40, hybrids, maybe? Too lazy to check, because e.g. the V60 T3 could mean a automatic 1.5 3 cyl or 2.0 4 cyl manual. Or the other way round?
Rented an automatic xc40 T3, mild hybrid. It had an engine. It was fine.
As a former Geo Metro owner (with the 5-speed, no less), this article warms my heart.
The Nissan Rogue would like a word. It’s actually in the next size class up from Bronco Sport.
The Bronco Sport is on the same platform and similar size as the Escape, which is in the same Compact Crossover class as the Rogue.
Yip, but most three cylinder cars are now force fed with two turbos and some even a supercharger then a turbo. Which means that one of the attractions of the motors, a raspy sound unlike anything else, gets muted….