I bet you’ve found yourself in this position: you’re sitting at an outdoor cafe, a hoagie in one hand and a sock puppet in the other, because you hate eating alone. As you’re happily feeding your puppet friend finger-bites of hoagie, a man frantically approaches you, knocking over chairs and children and climbing onto your table. He seizes your face in both his hands, brings his face nose-to-nose with yours, and demands, loudly, “Tell me what the biggest three-cylinder car is!”
Now, usually when this happens, most of us will mutter something like “a Wartburg?” and then pepper-spray ourselves to freedom, taking off running in the opposite direction of the three-cylinder weirdo before he can recover to ask you again.
I may take issue with the methods, but the three-cylinder questioning vigilante brings up a good, and, let’s be honest, important question: what is the largest passenger car ever to rock a three-banger?
I wasn’t really kidding about the Wartburg guess there; the Wartburg 353 Tourist wasn’t exactly a small car, especially by the standards of three-cylinder cars. I think by far the most common three-cylinder engine type used in passenger cars – there are likely some large, weird diesel three-cylinder engines, so I’m not counting those – were two-stroke threes, the kind pioneered by DKW.
DKW’s two-stroke three was a very clever engine design, with minimal moving parts and good fuel economy, with the added plus of being smoky enough to give everywhere you idle a certain moody, noir-film-like feel. A number of other cars adopted this engine design, like the aforementioned East German Wartburgs, and companies like Saab, which adapted the design for most of their early cars.
But none of these cars was especially large. It wasn’t until the advent of the modern re-emergence of three-cylinder engines that we actually saw some larger vehicles using them. I think the two best candidates for Largest Three-Cylinder Gasoline-Powered Passenger Car are the Chevy Trax and the Ford Bronco Sport.
Here’s a Trax:
…and here’s a Bronco Sport:
Between the two, the Bronco Sport is a good bit larger: about 3 inches wider, nine inches taller, 500 pounds heavier, all that. And it’s still definitely a three-cylinder engine under the hood! I counted, even:
I’m pretty sure the Bronco Sport has to be the largest mass-produced passenger vehicle ever to rock a gas-powered three-pot engine. Everything else is Suzuki Swifts or Festivas or Mirages or whatever, all small city cars.
But I could be wrong. The BMW i8, for example, has a three-cylinder engine as part of its hybrid drivetrain; it’s smaller than the Bronco Sport, but by some metrics, just barely. The Bronco Sport weighs 3,458 pounds, while the i8 is 3,455 pounds – only 3 pounds lighter! I’ve made sandwiches bigger than that!
So maybe there is some other unit of a three-banger I’m forgetting? Or does the Bronco Sport deserve the prize here? Please, help me think this through in the comments so I can finally get some sleep!
Top graphic image: Jason Torchinsky
1970s Ford P series step van with a 2 stroke Detroit Diesel 3-53 3 cylinder engine. Had dual rear wheels so rated (and occasionally loaded to) weight was over 10,000 pounds. Wonder Bread had thousands of ’em…
The Barkas, maybe? Pretty bigish van https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barkas_(van_manufacturer)
I drive a Bronco Sport turbo 3 banger everyday. It’s pretty decent little truck. If I drive modestly it’ll crack 30 mpg on 93 octane. Lately I’ve been running 87 and it’s just over 28 mpg. Fits both my kids (I’m 6ft and there’s room for me in the back). It’s AWD for Western NY winters. It’s a great commuting vehicle that can swallow some stuff. Couple weekends ago I took it to Spring Carlisle and camped in it overnight on my space.
I’d recommend a common automotive engineering metric to settle the debate: roadload at 50mph. Use the EPA-published F-Terms to calculate how much effort the vehicles have to expend to cruise at 50mph.
You mean the shambling rebadged corpse of the Fisker Karma (now the Karma Revero) isn’t constantly on your mind as the ideal car to recommend to anyone looking for a reliable, affordable car? It’s been using the BMW I3 for several years now, and at almost 5m long and 5000lbs, it’s got the Bronco Sport (and Rogue) beat on several metrics.
Also, potentially biggest grille that looks like a mustache, which is a very important win.
This is the answer I was looking for. It possibly outweighs some of the Geely PHEV contenders.
I read the headline to mean the car with the biggest 3 cylinder engine and was wondering how big it could possibly be.
Not three cylinders but four, but still notable: Fiat built two race cars circa 1910 for setting land speed records; the Fiat S76, which was nicknamed “The Beast of Turin”, used 28.3-liter 4-cylinder engines which produced nearly 300 HP:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Fiat_S76_Record.jpg
Yeah, that’s some 7 liters *per* cylinder.
For comparison, my current fleet of four vehicles includes a GMT400 truck with a 5.7-liter V8 engine which totals more displacement than the other three combined, lol (a Mercedes station wagon with a 3-liter diesel inline 5, a VW bus with a 1.6-liter flat four, and a Panhard Dyna Z with a 0.85-liter flat two for a total of just 5.45 liters)
I think the Rogue weighs more.
I could have sworn there would have been some enormous Brass Era 3-cylinder, but, no, Pope-Toledo, Thomas Flyer, and Rolls-Royce 15hp all had surprisingly modest dimensions
I’m not sure if all these answers all had a 3 cylinder but if they are Jason was certainly missing the lot of them
Is the Rogue larger?
I drove one of these because my wife loved the version in robin’s egg blue with white wheels and blue denim interior. But the 3 cylinder ran poorly and to get the 4 banger you were well north of 40 grand.
The i8 is such a cool car. Used ones are in tempting price ranges, but the cost to insure & register them was astronomical the last time I checked.
“Introducing the 2026 Wartburg!”
What about the latest gen Nissan Rogue? I believe it’s a 1.5L “VC-Turbo”. It’s narrower than the Bronco Sport, but almost a foot longer and weighs about 3700 lbs… almost 200 more than the Bronco Sport
Land Rover evoque is maybe half an inch shorter 200lbs heavier using a 1.5l 3cyl . Discovery sport used the same for the phev. Is about 8″ longer and at least 500lbs heavier.
There has to be some 3cyl diesel used in something big and heavy like a bus or truck. Maybe a 50s era perkins.
It is not the biggest, but most fun 3 cylinder = Toyota GR Corolla.
I’m pretty sure there’s an ’09 Chevrolet Malibu down the street that’s only running on three cylinders. Does that count?
Glad I wasn’t drinking coffee.
I would ask where you are but throw a stone (maybe kinda hard) anywhere in these United States and you’d probably come close to one…
Ugh! When will we learn? The evils of odd cylinder counts are numerous and vile. Sometimes I still feel like my penance for the one I owned is ongoing. Mark my words, odd cylinder count engines are the end of civilization as we know it.
Counterpoint: There’s an Audi that races and he came in to a service with one cylinder due to an electrical issue…instead of the zero cylinders and long tow home I’d have had to deal with due to a similar issue. IIRC there are two electrical feeds to his coils; one powers 4 coils and the other powers one coil. So, built in redundancy!
Ah, but how many cylinders did the engine have, functioning or not?
Started with 5 functioning, made it back to service with one functioning. It sounded horrific but made it through to service.
See, it was doomed from the start with 5 cylinders. Tool of the devil.
I’ve had rental 3-cyl cars. They’re adquate.
I have, however, had a 1L VW Skoda rental with a crew of guys for work. It was awesome, we all thought it was a little diesel until I popped open the fuel door to fill it.
Even if we said only in the USA the Escape is bigger and had the same 1.5L i3 as the Bronco sport and is still available new on the lots even though production stopped last year
I often forget to check by-lines before I begin an article. In this case I got one sentence in, read the words “sock puppet” and my brain said, “Ah. Torch.”
There are very few writers I can identify, Autopian or otherwise, within 2 sentences. Jason is definitely one of them.
Had the exact same reaction. Basically, Torch doesn’t need to put the author name in, it’s very evident. And on a long enough timeline, all Autopian authors will write in his style
Would something that had a Detroit diesel 3 cylinder count? Was used in a variety of medium duty and heavy duty trucks.
Well, the headline specifies passenger cars, so if you could horn them in there, why not?
One trip to the UK about a year or two ago I drove a Peugeot 5008 with a tiny 1.2l three-cylinder turbo. It was… adequate. Getting around the midlands doesn’t require a 300hp V6.
The 5008 is definitely bigger (maybe not as tall tho).
The 2020 Chinese market Buick Lacrosse and the facelifted Korean market Chevy Malibu both featured 1.35L I3Ts. The Lacrosse’s rightfully only lasted one single model year as it’s their flagship sedan, but the Malibu lasted till local production ended in 2022. Both of them are much longer than Bronco Sport and Rogue as they’re sedans, but they weigh just marginally less according to Wikipedia.
13-passenger 3-cylinder Indian market Force Trax Toofan would like to have a word:
https://www.team-bhp.com/tags/toofan