LITTLE ROCK — DEAR TOM AND RAY: I am thinking of buying a car, and I need to know if a four-cylinder or six-cylinder engine would be the wisest choice. I live on a hilltop, 2,400 feet above the valley, and the road to my home is about five miles up the long, steep hill. I have always driven a car with six or more cylinders, and I fear that a four-cylinder would not last long climbing the hill each day. What do you advise?
- Mary
TOM: There’s not an absolute answer to this, Mary. It would be like asking you if my brother should buy a shirt in XXL or XXXL. You’d be hard pressed to give him a good answer without seeing the specific shirt and the size of my brother’s spare tire.
RAY: It was a 195/65 R16 as of yesterday.
TOM: In general, engines are getting smaller and more powerful. So lots of people who used to buy V-8s are now buying sixes. And people who bought sixes are buying fours. And soon, people who’ve always bought fours will be buying three-cylinder engines.
RAY: And because of advanced technologies, like direct injection and turbo charging, people aren’t giving up any power when they’re moving down in size and weight.
TOM: So there’s no general rule anymore. There are underpowered sixes and overpowered fours. What you get depends on the technologies in the engine and the car the engine is paired with.
RAY: Sometimes the manufacturer will lay out a choice of engines for you. Pickup trucks are a great example of that. Some people use their pickup trucks as suburban commuter vehicles. So a six-cylinder engine may be all they need. Others may haul heavy equipment with their pickup, and they need the additional towing capacity of a V-8.
TOM: But we’ve also seen cases where a manufacturer will offer a lower-powered, older-technology “base” engine just to be able to advertise a low starting price. In that case, almost no one wants the base engine.
RAY: And then there are cases in which the base engine is really all anybody needs. The manufacturer just offers a more powerful engine to satisfy the egos of folks who want to overdo it and pay more. The Honda Accord comes to mind, with its great 185-horsepower four-cylinder engine, and its unnecessary 278-hp six.
TOM: In general, you’ll pay more not only to buy a six-cylinder engine, but also to repair and maintain it over the life of the car.
RAY: We just test-drove the brand-new Ford Escape. It’s a small SUV that used to come with four- and six-cylinder engine options. Interestingly, it has three engine options now, but they’re all four-cylinder engines. We drove the middle one, a turbocharged, 1.6-liter four, which is tiny by SUV standards. But we were surprised to find that it had as much power as anyone might need in normal driving.
TOM: So I wouldn’t necessarily recommend a six-cylinder for you, Mary. What I would recommend is that you avoid something whose reviews use the word “underpowered” a lot (unless those reviews are in enthusiast magazines like Car and Driver, which consider everything underpowered).
RAY: Once you narrow down your car choices, feel free to write back to us, and we’ll give you any specific thoughts we have on those particular car-engine combinations. But don’t be afraid of modern four-cylinder engines as a class. There are more of them than ever that provide plenty of power.
DEAR TOM AND RAY: If I bike up a steep hill, I have to slow down, since maintaining speed would exhaust me. Applying this to driving, I drive my VW Golf up steep hills in the truck lane quite slowly to save on gas. My wife used to disagree, but due to my persistence, even she does this, to a degree, when she is driving. I’ve noticed that no other cars do this. Am I nuts?
- Russell
RAY: No, you’re not nuts, Russell. You’re just annoying.
TOM: I mean, you’re technically correct. If you drive up a hill at 45 mph rather than 65 mph, you’ll use less gasoline.
RAY: You not only eliminate some wind resistance, but under certain circumstances you also may allow the transmission to shift into a higher gear, which saves you fuel.
TOM: But you’re also ticking off your wife, as well as the truck driver whose Peterbilt grille is inches from your rear view mirror because he’s eager to get his trailer full of melting Eskimo Pies to Waukegan by nightfall.
RAY: You want to be careful and be aware of what’s happening around you so you’re not making yourself a hazard on the roadway. Because speed differential on highways does cause accidents.
TOM: If you’re not causing truckers to honk and tailgate and pass you making obscene gestures, then it’s more a question of your priorities, Russell. Is your fuel economy more valuable to you than your time? Are you willing to accept the annoyance of others you inconvenience, including your wife, to get slightly better mileage? Or do you consider “slowing down and smelling the roses” to be just another benefit of your approach?
RAY: Actually, it’s not the roses you’ll smell in the truck lane. It’s diesel exhaust. Good luck, Russell.
Click & Clack (Tom and Ray Magliozzi) dispense advice about cars in Car Talk every Saturday. Email them by visiting cartalk.com
HomeStyle, Pages 33 on 01/05/2013