VW Begins Mexican Production of New 1.8T and 2.0T Engines for Jetta, Passat, Beetle

At Volkswagen’s new factory in Silao, Mexico—the company’s 100th worldwide—the company will assemble turbocharged 1.8- and 2.0-liter fours for the Passat, Jetta, and Beetle. Production is still ramping up, so the rollout will phase in over the next year. We first broke this news over a year ago.

Both engines are closely related, being members of what VW calls the EA888 engine family, and share 90 percent of their components. Importantly, both are the third generation of this engine, which exists in first-gen form in the Jetta GLI and Golf GTI in America. (We got a deep look at the engine last July courtesy of Audi.)

The 1.8T replaces the 2.5-liter inline-five as the primary motivator in the Beetle, Jetta, and possibly the Passat. It’s rated at 168 horsepower and 184 lb-ft of torque—the outgoing engine makes 170/177—and should vastly improve fuel efficiency and reduce emissions for the cars. It will be offered with a five-speed stick and a six-speed automatic transmission.

As a bit of a surprise, VW also announced that the Silao factory will begin building 2.0-liter turbo fours for the Jetta GLI and Beetle Turbo. Versus the current 2.0T, the new version is lighter, has reduced internal friction, and an integrated exhaust manifold with its own cooling circuit. The engine will offer an almost identical amount of power and torque as does the current engine, but we’re told that the internal upgrades will give a meaningful boost to the cars’ fuel-economy ratings. This engine might be chosen to replace the 2.5 in the Passat rather than the 1.8T. If it is, Volkswagen will mate it with the traditional torque-converter automatic, while the GLI and Beetle Turbo will stick with dual-clutch DSGs in addition to their available manual transmissions.

Other VW models that use the 2.0-liter turbo four are built in Europe, and get their engines from a plant in Hungary. Although the company didn’t say so today, we’d expect the GTI, Tiguan, and CC will switch to the newer version of this engine, too.

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• Comparison Test: 2013 Ford Fusion vs. 2013 Accord, 2013 Altima, 2012 Passat
• Instrumented Test: 2012 Volkswagen Beetle Turbo
• Long-Term Test: 2012 Volkswagen Jetta GLI

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The new Silao facility will have capacity to build 330,000 engines per year once it ramps up to full steam—enough to also supply the next-gen Q5, which will begin production elsewhere in Mexico in 2015. We’ve learned that VW is considering building its latest four-cylinder diesels (full details here) in Silao also, but it would require pretty significant expansion of the plant.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/caranddriver/blog/~3/wWmIl2QXKs8/

Christian Goethals Paul Goldsmith José Froilán González Oscar González Aldo Gordini