Chevrolet Beat to have the “Made in India” SMARTECH engine

General Motors India has an engine development and R&D center in Bangalore. The Boffins have come up with the prospective that Chevrolet Beat owners will be able to buy the Smartech 1.2 Liter petrol engine. The SMARTECH engine has been developed in GM’s Bangalore R&D center and it brings in a host of improvements over the outgoing power plant.

Amongst the most important improvements are the low end torque, marginally increased fuel efficiency and less vibes at higher reach of the new ‘SMARTECH’ engine. All this and much more will make the Chevrolet Beat a much more desirable car. Additionally, GM India’s designers have outfitted the SMARTECH engine with an aluminum cylinder head, a deep skirt cylinder block, and lightweight pistons. The DOHC valve-train with direct acting valve actuation is the other improvement.

These improvements are likely to enhance the engine response and smoothness while enhancing fuel efficiency. Besides, there is a low end torque that gets a bump up with a long runner plastic intake manifold. The lightweight counterbalanced crank shaft ensures that vibes are kept to the bare minimum as the rpm hits the 5000 mark. The engine is also embedded with a maintenance-free inverted tooth timing chain drive system. The chain links engage at a lower impact speed, thereby decreasing the engine noise.

Additionally the engine is equipped with an epoxy coating on the cylinder block, anti corrosion coating on cam cover baffles, and the use of stainless steel core plugs. The SMARTECH engine brings these resourceful changes to the table for higher durability of engine components and engine life. All these changes appear very promising and a comprehensive road test of the Beat with the SMARTECH engine would reveal the real on road improvements that the SMARTECH engine has endowed the 2011 Beat with.