In a once-unthinkable turnabout, Ford Motor Co. is bragging about how it now makes some of the smallest car engines in the industry – a sign of evolution for a company that once made its money selling powerful trucks, SUVs and the Mustang muscle car.
Ford’s race to smaller engines represents a trend in the industry as all automakers woo fuel-conscious consumers and work to meet increasingly stringent fuel-economy standards, said Jesse Toprak, an analyst at TrueCar, an auto price information company.
“We believe that we are going to pay more for energy going forward and that fuel efficiency is the top reason to buy. That is going on all around the world now,” said Alan Mulally, Ford’s chief executive, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times this week.
Mulally said that Ford’s strategy of making powerful but smaller engines is part of the automaker’s goal to “increase the fuel efficiency every year forever.”
Ford has focused on small turbocharged engines, which it calls its EcoBoost line. Although Ford vehicles with these engines carry a premium over standard models, they have among the quickest paybacks from gas savings in the industry, Toprak said. A recent TrueCar analysis of the latest industry offerings of small but powerful engines – with and without turbochargers – found that the Mazda3 with the SkyActiv engine and transmission was the best economic proposition.