Here’s a very basic guide to petrol engines (apologies to the technically competent among you, but not everyone is). I know that sounds like a dull way to start a blog, but please stick with me, it will be worth it! Engines contain a number of cylinders and each plays host to controlled explosion of a fuel and air mixture. That combustion process moves a piston, which turns the wheels.
Most modern cars have four cylinders, larger performance models and sports cars might have eight, 10 or even 12. Moving in the opposite direction, some smaller city cars have recently had only three, to keep weight, emissions and fuel consumption down.
All good so far. But Fiat is about to launch a two-cylinder engine – normally considered to be motorbike territory – in its quest for ever- cleaner motoring. Called TwinAir, the technology will power the Fiat 500 city car before transferring into the larger Panda and Punto.
I recently drove a 500 TwinAir around Turin and enjoyed it very much.
You have to take your hat off to Fiat’s engineers. They are genuinely an innovative bunch, having developed a number of other key technologies in the last few decades, and which have gone on to become standards across the industry. If two-cylinder engines are accepted in the same way, the potential of TwinAir is enormous. This is game- changing technology, so remember where you read it first.
Breakdown Cover from 
