A little comfort? Ten years before James Bond drove an Aston Martin DBS with a six-liter twelve-meter under the hood of the semi-open cave tunnels around Lake Garda, a small one tried there in the year 1999 Opel Corsa, The Opel evenly distributed its vehicle mass including the live weight of the author of these lines and a passenger including small luggage on 45 horsepower. This service was produced from a steel tankard measuring a total of Wiesn size, distributed over three cylinders in the format of small wheat beer glasses. Yours Bavaria: Yes, in Rüsselsheim or other finer circles, wheat beer is also administered in 0,33-liter test tubes (drink quickly before it evaporates).
Corsa di Cambio
With this quarter portion of Aston Martin cylinders and a sixth of their breathing volume, the Rüsselheimer Autochen chattered at night across the streets from Limone to Simione. Always along the wall, next to the high shores of Lake Garda, the Corsa with the characteristic torque of a Formula 1 engine screwed up the sea roads. This sewing machine drive, which was converted to petrol, needed switching friends (no typing error); virtuoso who kept it between nominal and maximum speed at all times. Corsa di Cambio. With a little good will, the machine sounded like a six-cylinder under the relatively large bonnet - in overrun mode, the only driving condition in which the term "overrun" could be used appropriately. A real poor people drive - a desolate mobility.
Diesel donkey
At a similar time, shortly before the turn of the millennium, Volkswagen was a little more sensible with its first three potties under the hood. However, with more powerful turbo diesels. First in the then revolutionary Lupo 3L; there it was about consumption, later with more conventional 1,4-liter in Lupo and Polo - also on loan in the blessed Audi A2. The older ones will remember: A quantum marine diesel: These diesel engines delivered torque in the institutional package, which is why you hardly had to drive these units up into the chatter area. The VW three-cylinder are - also externally ignited as in VW UP! - engine culture! Til today. The balance shaft of a three-pot drive can almost replace another three additional combustion units.
Downsizing: Three Kölsch please
The three-pot drives in the Smart received acceptance 15 years ago. Busy motor mini plis were organizing in the rear, which conjured up quick 600 PS from 55 cubic. Turbo: standard. Three added Kölsch glasses plus a turbopump became lively, colorful city fleas. Connoisseurs know that with a Smart you always felt the fastest in the city ... until the shift break came because the transmission control took one to occasionally three gearshift seconds. In addition, the Smart could only sail in front of the wind. Crossing against the wind, with its endlessly translated steering, required roughly as many oarsmen as a British Royal Navy war caravel in the 18. Century. With usually only one helmsman that meant: cranking!
Trust your pizza delivery boy
In addition, with the Smart, no ... it was deductible: the suspension. Since it does not exist, the thing should be done only with teeth at that time. Before a car tester would ever have used the term “suspension” for a first-generation Smart, he would have bit his tongue while driving. It was only because of the miserable cranking and the slow motion that the three-cylinder got less literal prominence than it deserves. So the listening experience remains. For example, in Hamburg's bourgeois forest villages, a very special rush hour starts around 18: 00 Uhr. Pizza delivery men work with three-pot-powered Smart, Peugeot 107 or little brother Citroen C1 under full load and in a small corridor through the outer northeastern districts of the Elbe metropolis.
Fast food in three pots
On the chattering high-revving three-cylinder in the flyby, residents of the main streets can acoustically keep pizza statistics. Attention: Please reduce the pizza quota by ten percent for the noble districts of Volksdorf and Poppenbüttel, because the Sushi Express (small print on the smart: "Pizza is stupid") also delivers its cold fish with three pots. Unforgettable how the author of these lines ... then ... with one of the first (red) Smart Roadsters burned out in front of the "Joeys" branch (Hamburg's market-leading pizza service). Past their (also red) pizza smarts. The pizza drivers were jealous. OK, even with a Smart Roadster, real burnout was not possible due to ESP castration. In addition, the sports car has proven to be a business flop ("Schmaroadster"). But: With the 60-PS version for For Two and Roadster, Smart introduced the waste gate chatter when the engine blew off before switching. Dreizylindärrrrrrr. Prrrrrrrrr.
Three wheat beer glasses with fire water
The three-cylinder is now fully poured. The weak-breasted Corsa engine of that time has now become supercharged barrel organs. Meanwhile Ford shone with his One-liter EcoBoost triple as Engine of the Year 2014, The BMW i8 is even more remarkable. There, three original yeast wheat cylinders add up to 1,5 liters and sprinkle 231 petrol horsepower (plus 130 PS temporarily electric). 150 PS liter output is already a pound for a combustion engine in series trim! What the first smart turbos already indicated is becoming an addiction in the i8. BMW, not at all bold, sells the i8 drive as a halved row six for 98 octane fire water. To brush the edges of physics, this is not entirely wrong, since 3er and 6er drives develop similar mass forces.
symphonies
What the only three pots under the hood lack in suppleness to the straight or rich six-cylinder,, the three among the burners with character compensates. In the Bavarian i8 there is a drive ... only surpassed by the Silbermann organ, which, invented 300 years ago and now reconstructed (as appropriate), sets the Dresden Frauenkirche in vibration again. Two types of acoustics. One result: symphonies. Prrrrrrrr.