‘Breakthrough’ in car diesel

Press, 25 July 1986, Page 25

‘Breakthrough’ in car diesel

NZPA-Reuter London Two British companies have unveiled a car diesel engine they said would run on 40 per cent less fuel than petrol engines by using technology they described as an automotive breakthrough. Spokesmen for Britain’s Rover carmaker and engine manufacturer Perkins, said the new Prima engine was the first car engine with highspeed direct injection. They said that by injecting fuel with air direct into a combustion bowl at the top of the piston, the new engine uses 15 per cent less fuel than conventional car diesel engines, where initial combustion takes place in a pre-chamber. “Truck diesel engines already had direct injection,” the Perkins spokesman told Reuters. “The problem always was how

to get the benefit of direct injection at the higher rates of engine speed which are required for motor car performance.” A development programme for the new engine cost £27 million ($75.6 million) over four years, including funds from Britain’s Department of Trade and Industry, he said. Perkins said the Prima needed to be serviced half as often as conventional car diesel engines. It said the Prima would go for 300 hours or 12,000 miles between services. Austin Rover, a subsidiary of the Rover Group, formerly known as. British Leyland, will install the engines in a van called the Maestro coming out in September. Less than a tenth of all passenger cars in Britain are diesel-engined, but the number is rising.