It all starts with marketing…

It all comes down to fierce competition on the new-car market. This competition didn't spring up yesterday, it's been around for many years. And the whole time, every carmaker has been bending over backwards to hold on to its customers and win new ones too. To do that, you have to position your product very aggressively on certain parameters. This applies to engines too, among other things.

For instance, one maker declares: "our cars are very fast", another says "ours are economical", while a third positions its cars as "powerful and capable off-road" (author's note — these are very crude examples, I know, no one puts it word-for-word like this, but if you add up all the taglines, slogans, ad copy and so on, that's roughly where it lands). Even so, all three have whole lineups of engines and models — from weak and economical to fast and torquey.