It is dumb to change the fuel injection strategy between the Europe and US version of the same engine but Ford did it any way.
As for standard Fiesta vs. Fiesta ST, with different engines I would expect lots of differences.
I would guess the 1.0 EcoBoost has a similar speed density injection strategy but I could be guessing wrong.
It wouldn't surprise me if the standard 1.6 uses MAF, it is old. It also doesn't have a turbocharger and all the pressure sensors associated with electronic boost control.
If you want to see dumb by Ford, look at the passenger side motor mount which seems to be the same as the standard 1.6 Fiesta mount and likes to pop off the top of its mounting bolt. They just about doubled the torque but decided to leave it alone. There is the 4*108 bolt pattern too.
From the outside that looks dumb. From the inside, a few dollars here and there might have sunk the US market Fiesta ST so the engineers doing "dumb" stuff might be heros.
I agree with you 100%. I think sometimes people just over look what they actually have to go through to even build a car to sell. When you start talking about things like the engine mount, when they go to build a car, it is like a program for a computer. It follows a unique set of steps and each step cost x amount of dollars. When you the consumer has a problem, and you tell the dealer, they pass that information along to the Quality Assurance Team. Once the Quality Assurance Team gets enough of the same complaint, they pass it along to the engineers, the engineers might suggest a solution to fix the problem but that to go before the Budget Team. If the problem can be fix cheaper than it can be to perform warranty service, then it gets changed in production. But Remember, if they sold 150,000 units of the vehicle, and 100 complained. You haven't even hit 10% yet.
Automobile manufactures do not spend money just to make the public happy. If they can share a part with another car, the part is getting shared. It all comes down to a bottom line.
Let's take the Focus RS. Not available here for some time. Now, Ford feels like its time to bring it to the US but instead of building a domestic specific model, they build a global model. This cost much more to build than two different local models up front because now you have to build the car to satisfy safety standards in both places, Left hand, Right hand, etc. Then you have to source all of the parts and enough parts to satisfy the build. So Ford says, limited production. Why? Because they need to make sure the product is well received. Its like making a big budget movie and what is the likelihood that we will get our money back. Let's take Waterworld for example. Budget was $175 Million as of today, it is in the hole 8 million. Or, Superman vs Batman, terrible reviews, budget was $250 million but has made 450 million to date.
If they are able to sell all of the ones they build at the price they want to sell them for, you will see larger production numbers of that car next year. If not, you wont. If none of this makes sense, do this, go to
www.metraonline.com. Go search on 2014 Ford Fiesta St. Then look at the wiring harness and the dash kit. What does it say? Fits Ford Fiesta 2008 and up. Obviously the 2008 fiesta does not look like the 2014, but the underlying parts, a lot of the sensors, a majority of the wiring harness in the vehicle is the same and that is not limited to platform. Automobile manufacturers share parts from what the engineers call "Parts Bins". The only time you get a built from the ground up is new segment and their will come a cost analysis for that build, and even then the engineers will be going to the parts bins because if there is not a problem with how something works, why spend the time and money reengineering it, and the cost of prototyping it, and the added cost of manufacturing a new part when we have one on the shelf that works.
This is Business 101. No guessing, no speculation, no I think so. This is how it is. Another way to say it in a much shorter version is Return on Investment. Car manufacturers do not just throw money at a car and say lets build this for our customers because that is what they want. Take a moment and put yourself in the engineers chair. Your boss comes to you and says, we need to cut cost across the board, but continue to be innovative. How do you do it? Your a car company, you sell cars all over the world. The new guy who just got hired who you think is a chump, says out loud at the table, why don't we just consolidate everything and sell everything on the global market but from one design. You say, "Tard" that wont work different standards in different parts of the world. He says, no, what we do is come up with a design that we can build and market globally, that meets everyone's standards. He just saved the company 1 billion US in production, and probably another billion in marketing.
The Ecoboost is no different. Lets design an engine. Lets design engine software. We know how to put tires and wheels on the car, suspension, etc. Let's design an engine that is scalable. We will use 1 computer program, change the displacement for different applications, but that is just size. Instead of us building 6-8 different engines to use across our platform, lets build 4. We can also cut our costs buy buying more parts from the same manufacturer instead of less parts from more. Training our service guys just got easier because if you can work on 1 ecoboost, you can work on all of them.
Every car company is moving in that direction, they have always been pulling from the parts bin, but now more than ever. Cost up front are more, but like software, once its built, its money in the bank.
