Ecoboost Falcon review....well kind of

[Brazen]

They load up Ecoboost Mondeo to Falcon weight to see how it performs against I6 Falcon.

Falcon will have better power and torque, but being RWD I assume use more than the Ecoboost Mondeo.

Cliff notes:

• Falcon I6 same highway economy as ballasted Ecoboost Mondeo
• Falcon I6 uses 6% more fuel than ballasted Ecoboost Mondeo around town
• Falcon I6 2 seconds faster to 100kmh (6.9secs to 8.9secs) than ballasted Ecoboost Mondeo
• They think Ecoboost should be priced cheaper than the I6 (I have been saying this for a while)

Overall a pretty positive review on the Ecoboost.

http://www.carpoint.com.au/reviews/2...d-falcon-26150

Ford Falcon XR6, Ford Mondeo EcoBoost

Quickspin
Melbourne and Geelong, Victoria



In pursuit of better fuel economy, the Falcon is about to get a four-cylinder engine as an option. At motoring.com.au, we’ve been curious about how successful this formula will be.

History shows cars like the four-cylinder Commodore from the 1980s used as much fuel as the six-cylinder versions. That’s because the smaller engine had to work harder to get the big sedan moving. More recent examples include the Mazda CX7 SUV powered by a 2.3 turbocharged four-cylinder engine. Despite what the fuel label says, in the real world it uses as much fuel as a six-cylinder Ford Territory.

So, will the same thing happen to the Falcon, or has technology moved on?


THE SAME BUT DIFFERENT
The four-cylinder Falcon that Ford will call Ecoboost is still at least six months away… So we came up with a test to see how it might perform.

Enter the updated Ford Mondeo. It has the same 2.0-litre, turbocharged four-cylinder that will soon be fitted to the Falcon.

To test the engine’s economy and performance in a bigger, heavier car, we added ballast to the Mondeo, to bring it in line with the weight of the Falcon.

Ford will no doubt change the calibration of the four-cylinder engine when it is slotted under the Falcon’s nose, and the gearbox ratios. Indeed, the gearbox will be completely different – the Falcon remaining rear-wheel drive with a longitudinal engine installation. Driven by the front wheels, in theory the Mondeo has less driveline power loss because the output of the engine doesn’t have to travel far to reach the road.

Together these variables will make a difference to the production version of the four-cylinder Falcon, but were out of our control in this test.

The main aim of our exercise was to find out what happens when Ford’s new four-cylinder engine is required to operate in a much heavier car – especially given that the EcoBoost engine has 30 per cent less power and torque to work with than the Falcon’s six-cylinder.

In the Mondeo, the 2.0-litre EcoBoost engine has 149kW of power and 300Nm of torque. The Falcon’s 4.0-litre six has 195kW of power and 391Nm of torque. But the Mondeo’s 300Nm is available across a wider range of power (from 1750-4500rpm) whereas the Falcon’s peak torque figure is achieved at 3250rpm.

It should be noted at this point that, due to the fettling of local engineers, the Falcon four-cylinder engine will likely have slightly different power and torque than the Mondeo.

So in the meantime, it’s all about the weight – and the wait. The Falcon XR6 sedan weighs 1704kg according to the brochure. Our rental car example, with some luggage on board, weighed 1725kg.

With the help of race team technicians we learned that the Mondeo tipped the scales at 1580kg – so we added 145kg, plus another 10kg for the difference in the weight of the drivers. (Incidentally, before we added any ballast, the Mondeo had a near perfect weight distribution of 479kg/477kg over each front wheel and 311kg over each back wheel. The Falcon, meanwhile, weighed 480kg/459kg over each front wheel and 380kg/406kg at the rear. All figures are left-to-right respectively.)

We then filled each car’s petrol tank to the brim and began our economy challenge…


HITTING THE ROAD
First up was the highway cycle. We drove from the south-eastern outskirts of Melbourne to Geelong, the home of the Falcon’s inline six-cylinder engine.

On the journey there and back, both cars encountered normal traffic conditions, headwinds, crosswinds, even a dash of rain. The average speed was between 80-100km/h. Both cars were driven in the same normal manner – that is, not for fuel economy.

We even took turns over which car would lead, and tried to ensure each car was not in the other’s slipstream – or the draft of other vehicles that could give a wind-break advantage.

Having made it to Geelong we swapped cars (and 10kg of ballast for driver differences) and headed back to Melbourne. Thankfully it was against the peak hour traffic that was coming towards us. There’d be plenty of that in the next part of the test.

Part two of our economy challenge was city and suburban driving, to see how the cars perform in typical traffic conditions.

We expected the Mondeo would do well on the open road because, once up to speed, the weight is less likely to impact on economy. The engine has cylinders that are half the size of the Falcon’s – and two fewer of them. In the city, however, we expected the four-cylinder Mondeo that weighed as much as a Falcon to struggle in stop-start traffic. Not in terms of being able to move its weight, but that it would severely knock the fuel economy around. Only time – and a brimming of the tanks – would tell.

You could certainly feel the extra weight in the Mondeo, but it wasn’t anything it couldn’t handle. After all, our ballast is merely the weight equivalent of taking a couple of mates for a drive.

Our biggest battle was with trams, taxis and the usual bedlam. Once again both cars were driven normally, not for economy.

Progress was slow. Having clocked up almost 200km in a little over two hours on the highway, it took us half a day to travel a fraction of that distance in the city. Our average speed was less than 20km/h. Indeed we spent much of the test going nowhere.

Having done enough of the daily grind – the equivalent of the morning and the afternoon peak – it was time to compare results.

We refilled both cars to the brim, just as we had done the day before after the highway test, and crunched the numbers. The final figures came as a surprise to all testers.

The four-cylinder Mondeo was as thirsty as the Falcon on the freeway – 9.0L/100km compared to the Falcon’s figure of 9.1. Just 0.1 of a difference -- in automotive terms, this is as good as a dead-heat.

In the city, the loaded Mondeo used 14.5L/100km – nowhere near as frugal as the official economy claim, but better than the Falcon, which used 15.4L/100km… A difference of around 6 per cent.

So in our test the four-cylinder was almost no benefit on the freeway, and only a marginal benefit around town.

What needs to be determined now is if Ford Australia can build a four-cylinder Falcon that can deliver better than a 6 per cent fuel saving – in the real world.

And how much will it charge for the four-cylinder option? We reckon it ought to be cheaper than the six-cylinder, but we hear it may come with a price premium.

One more question remains: what about performance?

A back to back acceleration test showed the Falcon six-cylinder is still king. It sprints from rest to 100km/h in 6.9 seconds. Our laden Mondeo stopped the clocks two seconds later. Overtaking performance when on the move also went the Falcon’s way.

We’ll reserve final judgment until we drive the real four-cylinder Falcon.

In the meantime, the early signs are promising: it looks like Ford may have created the first four-cylinder that doesn’t use more fuel than a six-cylinder in a big sedan. The question many will want answered, however, is at what cost to performance.