EcoBoost T6 under development locally?

There's no word yet on an EcoBoost-powered Falcon mule doing the rounds at Ford's You Yangs proving ground. Two weeks ago, when it was announced that Ford's large car would offer a four-cylinder powerplant with turbocharging and direct injection, the company's Rob Connor hinted at a due date around about now.

During a Q&A session this morning with Ford Australia President Marin Burela, the Carsales Network asked the direct question: "When do you get to drive a mule?"

Far from announcing that backroom boffins had successfully run an EcoBoost engine in the FG Falcon for the first time, Burela was uncharacteristically lost for words.

"Let me get back to you on that," replied Burela after a long pause to gather his thoughts. "We've been playing around with things, let's just say that."

"We've been working on how the whole package would work -- obviously through digital and technical assessment.

"I'm quietly confident we'll deliver even better performance and better levels of fuel economy than we predicted in the early stages of our development."

From that point, we specifically asked whether Ford's development team could draw on experience from the T6 program with the (EcoBoost) powerplant.

"There are some areas of synergy," Burela responded. "However, it's a different application; it's a truck. It's got different requirements versus a passenger vehicle... there are some differences there."

We take that to be confirmation that the EcoBoost engine will be available in the T6 when it goes on sale.

T6 is the codename for the global light commercial vehicle development program allocated to Ford Australia. When it goes into production, it will replace the current Ranger and (Mazda) BT-50 models.

It's not too far-fetched to imagine the EcoBoost four-cylinder engine powering this model in a sort of 'V6 sport ute' variant -- without the V6.

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