All Entries Tagged With: "gimmick"

Ford’s EcoBoost Tear-Down Stunt Is Gimmicky

At next week’s Detroit Auto Show, Ford will be tearing-down an EcoBoost engine live in front of the public as an attempt to prove how tough and reliable their new twin-turbo V6 truck motor is. While this sounds like a great way to demonstrate the toughness of this particular motor, it’s really just a gimmick.

Ford's "live" EcoBoost tear down is more of a gimmick than a predictor of engine reliability

To be sure, Ford’s plan sounds impressive:

Ford powertrain engineers will tear down an engine that…has the equivalent of 160,000 miles and 10 years of rugged use. Engineers punished it in temperature and load extremes simulating nearly 10 years of use – a regimen tougher than any consumer could ever subject a truck to….It hauled 55 tons of lumber…It ran at full throttle for 24 straight hours towing 11,300 pounds [and] completed the world’s toughest desert endurance race, the SCORE Tecate Baja 1000 in Mexico

The thing is, there’s a difference between simulated wear and tear and the real world.