Tony Lockhart
Avoiding Stress, at Every Opportunity
170 bhp from a 1.4 4 pot with a turbo unreliable, no surprise Sherlock!
A natasp 1.4 car engine is going to generate 100bhp with a nice tractable tune and 130ish with a lumpy cam and raised rev limit. More than this is going to need bike engine technology or extensive tuning, both costly and/or less driveable. A turbo to add 50-60 bhp to such an engine is going to have to run about 0.5bar, I'd imagine, and the thing is unlikely to last 100k miles.
I'd say it was just VW cutting corners, cost and thorough development that caused the problems, not the BHP/Litre. I'm not aware of, for example, Mercedes having such trouble with their A45 AMG which chucks out 360bhp (?) from a 2.0 four pot. And by focal does that thing go. I just couldn't help the expletive when I first put my foot down, The sales guy said that almost everyone said roughly the same
VW probably rate alongside BMW. BMW's N47 2.0 diesel engine suffers from failing timing chains, and the chain is at the back of the engine! Deep joy. And good luck getting them to admit it is ALL their fault.