124 spider and its 1.4 litre engine

168 hp & 180 lb/ft derived from this little power plant is a far cry from the power attainable from mass produced cars of only a few years ago - which just shows the advancement continually appearing on the forecourts. It sounds pretty good as well !

But... does this mean that the modern car engine, enduring these maximum stresses that have been designed from it, does not bode well for longer term survivability of those power plants. Are we now at a stage of "worn out by 50,000 - 75,000 miles - throw it away" ????

168 bhp from 1.4 litres, so 120bhp per litre. This really isn't excessive, as modern materials, super-tight manufacturing tolerances and high quality oils means that if they are looked after, these engines will last for ages

My engine is 240bhp per litre and has done about 300,000 miles.

Jap bikes from a quarter of a century ago were pushing out well over 100bhp/litre, so its not unusual

I'm not sure where 168 hp comes from.

In the UK/Europe, the Fiat 124 Spider is listed as 140 hp and the Abarth version 170 hp, whereas in the US the Fiat is 160 hp and the Abarth 164 hp.

All from the same 1368cc MultiAir engine and the same turbo, the differences due to different mapping in the ECU, AFAIK.

just be careful of the MA unit, No one wants to really do any mapping on them, and they do like to fail.

There are some guys in the US who have a piggy-back system eurocompulsion

Isn't this a bit like the Only Fools And Horses "I've had this broom for 20 years... it's only had 17 new heads and 14 new handles" gag?

Just kidding

But anyway, I just think the technology is advancing so much now that the engines are better able to handle it and survive. Car reliability generally seems to get better from one decade to the next. Compare modern supercars to those from the 70s and 80s - reliability of a Huracan vs a Miura, for example, despite the galactic difference in performance of the two.

There's also other little things I've noticed over the years, like how so many engines no longer need 'running in' services, or don't need to be nanny'd in for the first thousand miles, and even the service intervals on many cars nowadays (my wife's Juke for example is 18,000 miles).

True - the car is definitely a bit "Trigger's broom", but to be fair, there have "only" been four engine failures and all of them were caused by me. I cooked an engine due to a dicky coolant tank cap, I bent a rod due to running too much boost, I melted a couple of pistons due to running WAY too much boost and I scrapped a head when the aux belt jumped into the cambelt. If I wasn't constantly pushing it, the lump would have lasted a lot longer.

I have the 1.4 Turbo Multiair FIRE engine in our Delta 3 and its a superb unit. OK a substantially different application but its decent performance/usability and on our yearly run to Devon I get 48-49 MPG down the M5

It's a lot better than the non-multiair 1.4 Turbo then. In my miserable MiTo it was lucky to achieve 30mpg and it wasn't a load better in the Abarth 595.

We have the unit in a 500X albeit in 140bhp guise, it returns a decent 33mpg from 90% city driving.

I don't know the ins and its of the different evolutions of the mutliair unit but I believe it was in the Giulietta with 170bhp, which launched in 2010.

Yes they also did the 1.4 T-Jet 16V in the Delta but the MA is the one to go for.........Mrs Nello is after a 500X Gunzi and we're looking at the MA based on experiences with the Delta - Might need to PM you about them

Feel free to ping me a PM, the missus loves it!

Oddly the ma 1.4 we had always returned much less mpg then the none ma we have in the abarth. That said the ma was much more responsive, didn't seem to suffer turbo lag as badly

I've had two 1.4 MultiAirs - a 135bhp one in a Mito, and currently the 170bhp version in a Giulietta. Both totally reliable, it's a great engine IMO. Feels much bigger than 1.4 litres, interestingly they both seemed to have pretty much identical consumption around 38-39mpg.

Like Gunzi, we also have the Multi Air II in our 500X, in the 103kw version, and I am very happy with its response to throttle etc.

One little detail I read in the Quadrifoglio blurb was the 35psi peak boost figure. That's 2.4bar...

Yes, absolute not guage pressure. Fiat make the same mistake with the 124 Spider claiming 2.49 bar boost IIRC

Oh...

Which is of course the way pressure should *always* be measured, on an ic engine. This mix of zero at 1000mbar, PSI above that, and mbar south of that is just plain silly. Don't let's even mention 14.7psi...