General Tipo 1.6

[43576]

I recently visited my family in Tuscany. While I was there, my cousin lent me his 1993 Fiat Tipo 1.6 with 177,000 km on it. It's a 5-door model in a nice red wine metallic color with a digital cluster. I found the car to be quite cool, with a nice soft suspension and a very robust gearbox. However, the 1.6 engine lacked power. I wasn't sure about the horsepower it had, so I did some research.

I found out that the 1.6 injectors in the car produce 85bhp. This seemed strange to me, especially when compared to other 1993 cars like the VW Golf 1.6, which had 102bhp from 8 valves, similar to the Tipo.

I used to own a 1993 Ford Escort 1.6 with 91bhp from a single camshaft.

I'm wondering if Fiat's aim was economy when designing the Tipo. I found the Fiat Tipo's average fuel consumption to be around 36mpg, while my Escort did around 40mpg.

 

[s130]

The Tipo 1.6 used SPI (Single Point Injection). This is basically a carburetor style body with a central injection nozzle/jet in the top half of the venturi above the throttle valve.

If VW Golf and Ford Escort used multiple injectors then this could account for the differences.

 

[vexorg]

There are so many factors, air flow being the most critical, but there will be decisions made for that power by probably a committee.

In the late 80's, Vauxhall made the mistake of asking lotus to tune their 1.6 engine for the nova gsi. 160+ bhp later, Vauxhall decided that was too much and tuned it back down. Basically virtually all engines are at nowhere near their max power potential.

 

[jonti]

I recently visited my family in Tuscany. While I was there, my cousin lent me his 1993 Fiat Tipo 1.6 with 177,000 km on it. It's a 5-door model in a nice red wine metallic color with a digital cluster. I found the car to be quite cool, with a nice soft suspension and a very robust gearbox. However, the 1.6 engine lacked power. I wasn't sure about the horsepower it had, so I did some research.

I found out that the 1.6 injectors in the car produce 85bhp. This seemed strange to me, especially when compared to other 1993 cars like the VW Golf 1.6, which had 102bhp from 8 valves, similar to the Tipo.

Good report. The Tempra got the multipoint version of the 1.6 by the end, a review said it breathed better than the SPI. The bhp looked much healthier, over 100 from memory. SPI feeble in a heavier car for that time.