Fiat’s famed 1.3 liter diesel engine has powered as many as 24 cars from five different manufacturers and was also known as the ‘national engine of India’.
Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles India has just discontinued the production if its famed 1.3-litre diesel engine, at its Ranjangaon plant. This 1.3 liter diesel engine was also known as the ‘national engine of India’ and has powered as many as 24 cars for five different car manufacturers. It was used by Fiat as the Multijet engine, DDiS by Maruti Suzuki, Smartech by Chevrolet, Quadrajet by Tata, and CRDi4 by Premier that used it in the Rio compact SUV.
This engine has been pulled out just a couple of months before the BS6 emission norms kick in. Fiat will not be updating this engine for the upcoming emission norms as they didn’t see any business case in doing that. Maruti Suzuki and Tata were the largest customers of this engine. However, come BS6 norms, both Maruti and Tata have come up with their respective diesel strategies for their India line-ups and that does not use this 1.3 liter diesel engine by Fiat. Fiat themselves did not have sufficient sales for this engine to justify its case.
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As for Tata, they also developed their own range of diesel engines ranging from 1.05 liters to 1.5 liters in 2016. These engines were being used in the Tiago, Tigor and the Nexon. The company, however, continued to use the 1.3-litre diesel engine on the Bolt hatchback and the Zest compact sedan in small numbers.
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FCA issued a release on the development that said, “Our JV manufacturing facility FIAPL today produced the last BS4 1.3-litre Multijet engine. This dependable, legendary turbo-diesel Fiat engine has, over the years, powered many popular vehicles in India. With the BS6 emission regulation norms being implemented, production has now been discontinued as we are actively moving into the manufacturing of BS6 powertrains. FIAPL produced a total of 8,00,050 of these dependable1.3-litre turbo-diesel engines in the life-cycle. We remain fully committed to our customers and have a robust plan ensuring spare parts availability for the life of any Fiat vehicle equipped with this workhorse. Parts will available at all FCA authorised workshops for the next 10 years.”
