Ford's tiny 3-cylinder named International Engine of the Year

Ford's 3-cylinder EcoBoost took top honors for the second time running at this year's International Engine of the Year awards among a field of nominees crowded with turbochargers.

The awards, similar to the annual 10 Best Engines list from WardsAuto, ranks the industry's 12 top engines by size as chosen by dozens of international journalists. It's not a science by any means, but seeing as we've revved many of these engines ourselves, we're apt to agree.

The Ford 1.0-liter turbocharged 3-cylinder, which makes an impressive 123 horsepower, has been on sale in Europe since last year, and it's arriving on the Fiesta this summer alongside a larger, 1.5-liter 4-cylinder turbo coming for the 2014 Fusion. A 1.6-liter version is already available and will stay on for the manual transmission model.

Volkswagen's 1.4-liter turbocharged 4-cylinder engine on its new Golf – neither of which we get in the U.S. – took the spot for best new engine. Another foreign engine, Fiat's turbocharged 875cc 2-cylinder that runs on compressed natural gas, took the "green" engine award. Fiat has no plans to bring the gasoline version of this engine, which is optional on the 500 and apparently quite fantastic on fuel, to our market. Ferrari's obviously incredible V12 on the F12 Berlinetta was chosen as top performance engine. It's the most powerful naturally aspirated production V12 ever.

Here are the rest of the winners, organized by displacement:

• Sub 1-liter: Ford 3-cylinder EcoBoost (technically it's 999cc).
  
  
• 1-liter to 1.4-liter: Volkswagen 1.4-liter TSI Twincharger (seen on the Polo GTI, a three-quarter size Golf GTI, which pushes 182 horsepower).
  
  
• 1.4-liter to 1.8-liter: BMW-PSA 1.6-liter turbo 4-cylinder (co-developed with Peugeot, this is a great engine used on the MINI Cooper).
  
  
• 1.8-liter to 2.0-liter: BMW 2.0-liter twin-turbo 4-cylinder (also named by WardsAuto, this engine powers the 328i and is an impressive replacement for BMW's 3.0-liter straight-six).
  
  
• 2.0-liter to 2.5-liter: Audi 2.5-liter turbo 5-cylinder (this engine literally howls and pulls hard; the only U.S.-spec Audi that has it is the TT RS, and it was available on the limited RS 3 sold overseas).
  
  
• 2.5-liter to 3.0-liter: Porsche 2.7-liter flat-six (we hardly hear about this base engine on the Cayman and Boxster, since Porsche hypes up the more powerful S, but it's direct-injected and fires off 265 horsepower).
  
  
• 3.0-liter to 4.0-liter: McLaren 3.8-liter twin-turbo V8 (brilliant at low-end torque, if not exhaust note, this V8 does the job of a supercar in a smaller package; there is 616 horsepower).
  
  
• More than 4.0-liter: Ferrari 6.3-liter V12 (as seen in the new F12 Berlinetta, this engine makes 730 horsepower without any turbochargers or hybridization; we've sampled the FF's 653-horsepower version and it goes just fine, thank you).

For good measure, spend a minute gawking at the red headers off the Ferrari's V12:

[Source: Engine of the Year]

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Source: MSN