Merc to get Renault engines

highland tourer wrote:

However, Mercedes have little recent experience in producing good small capacity engines. Most of the sub 2 litre engines in the A class have poor reviews stating that they are not very punchy or flexible and on the whole gutless. Sure, Renault's 1.2 and 1.4 petrols are getting a little long in the tooth (the 1.2 going back to the first gen Clio in 8 valve form), but in their latest guise of 1.2 and 1.4 turbo models are still quite competitive with other engines (such as VWs small capacity light turbo petrols) and getting much better reviews than small Mercedes engines. I would have thought a comprehensive overhaul of Renault's existing 1.2 and 1.4 turbo engines would be better than Mercedes attempting to design engines which traditionally they have been weak at, especially when Renault have a proven record of producing resonable supermini and small hatchback size engines.

It's not that straightforward...the engines used by Merc in the A- and B-Classes rarely see any developments at all; in fact, I think it's been quite a while since they last updated them. The reason is, of course, that these engines can be used only in these two models (due to their unique 'sandwich' structure), which means development costs are quite high since they are not spread out over a large number of models.

On the other hand, the petrol engines used by Renault are used in plenty of models and are sold in greater numbers, which means development costs are far less and hence get updated more often. (In fact, using the same arguments, Mercs V6s and V8s are used in nearly every model and so can afford comparatively large investments, which is why they're so good).