Tata Motors has just announced its new family of gasoline engines, called Revotron, and the first engine bearing this new name: the 1.2T. This 1,193 cc four-cylinder, turbocharged MPFI engine, Tata says, is the first engine of industrial engineering of its kind. It uses drive-by-wire technology, has multiple drive modes and has a cast iron block for better refinement. Now, because of the government provision allowing special tax benefits on cars under four meters with engines under 1200cc capacity, there are many 1.2 liter petrol engines in the small car segments in India that the new Tata Revotron will have to compete with.
The number that people first tend to watch is the maximum power figure, and with an 83.8bhp turbocharged on the tap, the Revotron is certainly a great step up over the naturally aspirated engine, 64bhp, 1.2 Xeta of the Tata Indica. This figure even surpasses the 1.2-liter petrol engines of the Toyota Etios Liva (79bhp), Ford Figo (70bhp), Fiat Punto (67bhp), Nissan Micra, Micra Active and Renault Pulse (75bhp), the VW Polo Three-cylinder 74bhp) and the Hyundai Grand i10 (81.8bhp, only). But then, the 1.2-liter engines Maruti Swift, Ritz and Dzire (85.8bhp), Chevrolet Sail (84.8bhp) and Honda Brio and Amaze (88bhp) produce even more power. The difference lies in the ease with which this power is accessed, and while the power of the Revotron 1.2T reaches only 5,000 rpm, it has to rev from any of the other engines for at least another 1,000 rpm before the output Of its maximum power.
The least noticed but possibly most significant performance figure in the real world is torque production, and this is where Tata's new engine has hit others. It produces a fleshy 14.3kgm from as low as 1,750rpm at 3,500rpm. The average maximum torque of the naturally aspirated engines in this list product is about 11kgm, and you have to rev most of them all the way to about 4000rpm to achieve it. However, it is worth noting that the Maruti K12 engine, Hyundai's Kappa2 engine and Honda's i-VTEC engine use variable valve timing (VVT), and this helps to much responsiveness.
Now, the obvious elephant in the room is the only 1.2-liter gasoline turbocharger engine that drives a compact car in India, and that's 1.2 VW's brilliant TSI. This four-cylinder, direct-injection engine has the Tata Revotron 1.2T whipped into specification, producing 103bhp at a similar 5,000rpm, and a massive 17.84kgm of torque between 1,500 and 4,100rpm. There is also an exceptional turbo-petrol EcoBoost three-cylinder 1.0-liter in the EcoSport, which has an even greater power.
Ultimately, these are just numbers, and only a first drive of this engine in their eventual host cars will reveal how successful Tata has been with their first turbo-petrol engine in the house. The price of these cars will also be revealing, since all the technology that has gone into making this engine will surely have been costly, and some of this will undoubtedly be passed on to the customer. But then Tata Motors is known for offering "more car per car", so there is a good chance that the cars that drive the Revotron 1.2T turbo-petrol engine will have a very competitive price.