Torque of the town: Honda’s diesel is here

After a long wait, Japanese auto giant Honda has unveiled its diesel engine line-up. The introduction of a smaller 1.6-litre i-DTEC engine—the first under its Earth Dreams Technology series—will also mark the entry of diesel engine Honda cars in India. Ammar Alvi has more.

The new 1.6-litre i-DTEC engine will churn out 120PS of power and 300Nm of torque at 2000rpm. For the European market, the first car to be powered by the diesel engine will be the Civic that will hit the markets in 2013. According to the company, the engine will be a fine combination of performance, efficiency and low emissions—94 g/km as per the company.

According to Tetsuya Miyake, Project Leader for the 1.6-litre i-DTEC engine, “This is a new approach from the ground up. There were no benchmarks for us because those targets would have been too low. We were determined to establish a benchmark of our own that our competitors would have to follow.”

The company has designed this engine keeping in mind the demands of the European customers, which are low-emissions and refinement. This new engine will be built at Honda’s European manufacturing facility in Swindon, UK, which can produce up to 500 diesel engines in a day. The company will introduce a 1.5-litre-i-DTEC diesel engine that will first power the Brio and the upcoming Brio notchback in early 2013.