BMW goes DKW

peasant

Back in the fifties, DKW tried to make people believe that their 3 cylinder two-stroke was essentially equal to a 6 cylinder four-stroke

Hence they called their model DKW 3=6

The point of the advertising slogan was to highlight an equivalence between the car’s two stroke three cylinder engine and a four stroke six cylinder engine. The underlying logic was that with the two-stroke cycle there is engine power produced by an explosion within each cylinder for every rotation of the crankshaft: with the four-stroke cycle there is power produced by an explosion within each cylinder only for each alternate rotation of the crankshaft. Thus it was asserted that the two-stroke engine was working twice as hard per rotation of the engine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DKW_3%3D6


Sixty years later BMW seem to hope that no one remembers that particular line of reasoning and are now trying to make us believe that their new and coming three cylinder range is basically just a six cylinder in disguise

The vibration characteristics are every bit as impressive as the unit’s lightweight and compact dimensions. In this respect, the three-cylinder engine shares a number of common features with the six-cylinder in-line engines – neither of them generates free inertial forces nor free moments of inertia. The three-cylinder engine is also free of first and second order inertial forces and the roll torque, which is very small compared to the six-cylinder engine, is completely eliminated by the use of a balance shaft. Thanks to its torsional vibration damper, which works on the principle of a centrifugal pendulum, the engine behaves immaculately even at low rpm, providing an extremely comfortable ride.

http://www.bmwblog.com/2012/09/14/bmw-unveils-new-3-cylinder-1-5-liter-diesel-and-petrol-engines/


You gotta love morkeshing

ION08

Interesting stuff.

The 1.3 RX8 engine is insured as a 2.6 for the same reasons (i have yet to find the logic behind taxing it as a 1.8 though)

So i wonder will insurance companies view this new 1.5 BMW engine as a 3.0 by that logic??

MetzgerMeister

ION08 wrote: »

The 1.3 RX8 engine is insured as a 2.6 for the same reasons (i have yet to find the logic behind taxing it as a 1.8 though)

The reason it's taxed as a 1.8 is because when Mazda were in the process of getting it on the system here before it was put on sale, they were pushing for it to be taxed as a 1.3 but because the car produced 232bhp, the government wanted it taxed as a 2.6. It physically is a 1.3 with 2 x 654cc combustion chambers.

In the end, they settled on 1.8 and yes, this is the only reason.

The RX8's introduction to the Irish market was delayed by at least a year due to this ongoing "battle" between Mazda and the Government.