Poll Of The Week: If You Could Get A More Powerful Engine In The Sonic, What Would It Be?
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We’ve got the Chevy Sonic in the GM Authority Garage this week. As we’ll discuss on an upcoming (all-new) GM Authority podcast, it’s a great car with just a few small blemishes. And since earlier this week, Chevy unveiled the optional RS appearance package for the Sonic, it got us thinking about a high-performance variant of the vehicle — and the engine that should power it.
So here’s our question: if a high-performance Sonic (Z-Spec, or otherwise) were to come to market, which powerplant should be occupy the engine bay? Cast your vote in the poll below — and hopefully GM will realize the demand for such a vehicle!
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I’d honestly never even buy an optional engine. I assume that most people who are going to buy a car this small would just go the most fuel efficient engine that has had the most money put into creating it.
Some sort of 200+ hp turbo 1.6 or 1.8 litre. Not insane but definitely powerful.
If money were no object and I were axe murderer swigging cheap booze and over the counter meds, I’d have to drop the LS3 in the Sonic and then start doing “harder drugs”.
“Harder drugs” meaning the removal of the rear seats of the Sonic to traversely mount the LS3, and then searching for a suitable transmission to interface with the rear wheels.
2.0 hight out put ecotec with a 6 speed man trans
At the end of the day what we want to know manoli is, is this a vehicle we should go out and spend 17 to 18 grand for on an LTZ model, or should we opt for the LT model for 16 grand, I may be a little off on true cost of ownership, but my point is is the car worth what GM is selling it for or would I be better off pursuing something else, maybe even a Cruze. Again how many stinking versions do you need of a car, especially a base model with a frankensteined radio from an 84 cavalier… Give me a break GM give me two models a base Eco version and a sweet sport version DONE…
there will be suprises in the future more to come………………….
If more power was needed, the smartest thing for GM to do would be to simply increase the output of the 1.4T that is already in the car. The Cadillac ATS will have 135 hp/L. No reason why this couldn’t be achieved with the Sonic’s 1.4T if GM made the move to direct injection. That would put the Sonic at a very respectable 189 hp, which should be enough to satisfy the tuner crowd. All this and the car would probably still get close to 40 mpg (maybe more since it would have DI).
With a simple ECU reflash people have been able to get the 1.4T up to ~175 Hp without anything other than a reflash. No DI, no larger injectors, nothing. So if we get an engine that puts out something close to that normally, I think that we would perfectly happy with that.