UNITED KINGDOM, June 1, 2005 - The 1.0 liter Insight IMA engine and the 2.2 i-CTDi won their respective size categories in the International Engine of the Year Awards 2005, presented by UKIP Media and Events Automotive Magazines. This is the 10th award for the 1.0 liter Insight IMA engine, which continues to make it the most successful engine since the awards started seven years ago. Judges give this engine the utmost praise with quotes like “Still the one they have to catch in the economy stakes.” Its clean sweep of the sub 1-liter category for six straight years in itself is a testament to the superior efficiency of this hybrid powertrain.
 

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Editor's Commentary:

The complete results can be found  here

Before passing judgment over these results, one has to take into account how these awards work. The complete rules can be found here: http://www.ukintpress.com/engineoftheyear/

Because it is based on the subjective impressions of the judges, their choice is limited to their knowledge of a particular vehicle. These category winners are not chosen by something like a technical committee which has the opportunity of examining a given number of engines and judge them after their study, it's about asking a few people to select their favorite engines in various displacement categories. Under these conditions, you also have to understand that it must be difficult for a journalist of a given country to vote for a car which is not available in his or her region. That said, it is pretty difficult to obtain high scores for cars that are not widely available. For instance, the i-CTDi engine was already available last year, but arrived second to the 325i. The only difference may be that while past year there was only an Accord powered by this engine, this year it has become more popular, as it has also arrived to the CR-V (and FR-V press vehicle).

Here is the composition of the jury by regions:

Europe: 27 judges
North America: 14 judges
Asia : 4 judges
Oceania: 2 judges
Africa: 2 judges
South America : 1 judge

That configuration explains in part the higher success of (Europe favored) Diesel engines, as well as many other points that some of you will mention after seeing these results. It also explains while almost every new BMW engine gets an award in its first year, Honda awards usually come after one or two years in the market. Honda really has some ground to gain to become popular in Europe.

Some thoughts:

1.) This year is the first one since its introduction, that the 2.0L engine of the S2000 does not win the award in the 1.8 - 2.0L class. In fact, it is the runner up, with only 11 points less than the VW engine. The 2.0 i-VTEC engine from the Civic TypeR also made it to top charts. The thing is that if you look to the 2.0 - 2.5L class, you will also find the 2.2L S2000. But the 2.2L engine is only available in North America, while the 2.0L is no longer available in North America since the 2004 model update. I believe that if the US S2000 was still a 2.0L, that engine would have won the contest again. The Civic Type R is only available in Europe and Japan (Japan only has 1 judge), and so on.

2) You may wonder why the 3L V6 of the Accord Hybrid is not at the top of the list, or why the 3.0 VCM of the Inspire in Japan has never been there (not even mentioned actually). The Accord IMA is only available in North America, and the Inspire never made it outside Japan. The same applies to the 3.3L Toyota Hybrid... I'm sure that the Toyota will gain some spots when it becomes widely available next year.