See (and hear!) the Elio engine run

We’ve covered Elio Motors for some time now. Finally, we get to show you some video of the Elio 0.9-liter three-cylinder engine running on the dyno stand. After intensive studying of the Suzuki Swift/Geo Metro G10 three-cylinder engine — which had about 100 cc more displacement than Elio’s new engine, by the way — Elio said it made the decision to build its own engine because it was the best way to get an updated version of the small three-banger that would take into account Elio’s goals of a $6,800 MSRP for the whole car, the 84 MPG highway fuel economy rating, and the need to do zero-to-60 in less than 10 seconds while topping out somewhere north of 100 MPH. We covered that decision twice, here and here.

The video itself is scant on details. We see and hear the engine running on the dynamometer. There’s an inset shot of technicians sitting at the controls viewing the horesepower and torque graphs. Unfortunately, the small inset video doesn’t allow us to see real-world horsepower or torque numbers on the engine, but Elio has frequently said it’s shooting for a zero-to-60 MPH acceleration time of “less than 10 seconds,” and the company hangs its marketing hat on a claimed 84 MPG highway, so we wouldn’t expect much more than 50 horsepower.

But enough about that. Here’s video of the engine running on the dyno. We happen to think it sounds pretty good, if prone to get a bit buzzy and annoying on extended highway runs. But we realize it’s likely unmuffled at this point in its development, so we’ll reserve final judgment of the engine’s sound and demeanor until we hear one in full production spec with a production muffler attached.

Elio Motors’ blog entry about the milestone was not verbose. As we covered in these pages previously, Elio said it was the first start-up automotive manufacturer in some 60 years to build its own engine from scratch. That previous announcement had targeted a public start-up date of Monday, Feb. 6 for the engine — a target Elio missed by just over a month, revealing the video to the public Monday, March 6.

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