By Leftlane Staff
Monday, Apr 10th, 2006 @ 9:58 am

In recent years, many automakers have continued to increase engine displacement, despite rising fuel prices and environmental concerns. For the most part, engines haven’t returned to their peak sizes of the muscle car era, but for many companies they are considerably larger than their offerings of ten years ago. A large portion of the big engine push has come from outside the U.S., with automakers like Mercedes pushing beyond five or six liters for performance models. Mercedes recently began implementing a new 6.3 liter AMG engine to replace its 5.4 liter V8. Meanwhile, BMW put a 5.0 liter V10 in the M5, and a 4.8 liter V8 in the 5-, 6-, and 7-series. But don’t expect BMW to follow Mercedes’ lead with even larger engines. Rather, the German automaker will focus on increased efficiency, according to Automotive News. BMW will use turbochargers, more efficient valvetrains and advanced electronics to boost performance while increasing fuel economy, the report said. The use of turbochargers is not entirely new to BMW, but the automaker has largely avoided them in favor of naturally-aspirated engines. That is slowly changing, however, with the introduction of a new bi-turbo for the 3-Series. Is this the beginning of a new trend for BMW? It looks that way…

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