Gadgetory

if you even remember the three cylinder engines of the 80s and early 90s you know they were one thing crap nobody uses the words too bad when they see a rusted-out Geo Metro Subaru justy or Daihatsu charade but threes are back i'm brian coolie here with the top five three cylinder engines and current production that are really Wow's on the road we're gonna rank these by their specific output in other words how much power they crank out per liter here we go number five is the 2014 Mitsubishi Mirage yeah they're still around sixty two horsepower per liter it's a 1.2 liter those 74 horsepower that 40 mpg average with a stick is quite good but beyond that nothing about it tries to be anything other than stingy so it's fittingly at the bottom of our list number for the 2014 smart for 270 horsepower per liter now smart must love this they're not at the bottom of a list for once that's 70 horse out of its one liter engine sadly gets worse mpg however then the Mitsu gets out of a larger engine the smart does 36 average this by the way is perhaps the oldest 3 cylinder on the market for 2's have had an inline 3 since launch back in 1998 now there is a BRABUS edition of the smart that eats up another handful of horsepower but not enough to move it to number 3 which is the 2014 Mini Cooper 91 horse per liter here we have the veritable Big Boi of our group a relatively portly one and a half liter engine but just three cylinders 136 horsepower thanks to a turbo and direct injection with a stick your average mpg is 34 incidentally this is the same basic engine found in the very different BMW i8 but in that car it's been hotted up to 228 horsepower but it's part of a hybrid system so that's another list number two is the 2014 Opel Adam 115 horse per liter now our US viewers won't know what I'm talking about but this is in a nutshell a hot-looking on to a Fiat 500 made by the Opel division of General Motors it's one liter three uses high-compression direct injection and a turbo to break the three-digit mark at 115 horse per liter on-demand oil and water pump are some of its other tricks to make sure that it sips fuel and doesn't squander it's three cylinder miser leanness before I get you to number one the king of the three cylinders is actually Nissan's di gt-r so one and a half liter that does four hundred horsepower that's a specific output of two hundred and sixty six horse per a little tiny leader you're not going to find one of these in your versa anytime soon it's purpose-built for the DeltaWing zeod RC hybrid race car the engine is small enough to qualify as a carry-on at the airport though at 88 pounds it would do a number on your rotator cuff as you wrestle it into the overhead though I've seen some you put heavier things up there our number one mighty three cylinder engine is found in the 2014 Ford Fiesta SF II it does 123 horsepower per liter this little turbo direct injection powerhouse is only found in this special lean edition of the Fiesta and only with a manual transmission which is fine by me since Ford's powershift dual clutch gearbox doesn't exactly inspire love letters and in this combination you'll get 36 miles per gallon average high tech cars and modern driving that's what you'll find at CNET on cars.com i'm brian coulis thanks for watching