The Multi-Air: A Revolutionary Valve Train System

The multi-air is actually a very complicated valve train system that uses electronic and hydraulic control to completely isolate the intake valve during high acceleration or maximum performance. This allows for high duration and high lift cam profiles, which can be dialed back to achieve low emissions and high fuel economy when cruising on the highway.

In contrast to traditional variable valve timing systems, the multi-air system provides more precise control over the engine's behavior, allowing for a more consistent and predictable power delivery. The idea behind this system is to maintain a consistent torque output level by varying the boost pressure according to altitude and other environmental factors.

The multi-air system uses advanced sensors and actuators to monitor and adjust the valve train in real-time, making it possible to optimize engine performance under a wide range of driving conditions. While some might be concerned about the complexity of this system, proponents argue that its benefits far outweigh any potential drawbacks.

One of the key advantages of the multi-air system is its ability to deliver exceptional performance while still achieving impressive fuel efficiency. The car's 34 miles per gallon highway rating is a testament to its efficiency, making it an attractive option for drivers who prioritize both power and economy.

When it comes to acceleration, the multi-air system delivers impressive results. With a turbocharged engine producing around 18 pounds of boost, the car can accelerate rapidly from 0-60 in just seconds. However, unlike some other high-performance cars on the market, the multi-air system doesn't produce a loud or obtrusive exhaust note.

Instead, the car's engine sounds surprisingly quiet and refined, even when operating under high power demands. This is due in part to the fact that the exhaust system is designed to be relatively straightforward, with no elaborate mufflers or other components that might muffle the sound of the engine.

In terms of handling, the multi-air system makes it possible for the car to balance exceptional performance with impressive fuel efficiency and low emissions. Whether driving on the highway or carving through twisty roads, the car delivers a smooth and responsive ride that's sure to please even the most discerning drivers.

One of the key factors in the multi-air system's success is its ability to adapt to changing driving conditions. When faced with rapid acceleration or braking, the system quickly adjusts to optimize power delivery and control. This makes it an ideal choice for drivers who prioritize handling and responsiveness above all else.

Of course, no discussion of high-performance cars would be complete without mentioning their legendary acceleration capabilities. And while some might argue that the multi-air system is not as powerful as some other options on the market, its ability to deliver consistent and predictable performance makes it a compelling choice for drivers who value speed and agility above raw power.

To put this in perspective, let's consider the performance of some classic sports cars from the 1960s and 1970s. The Ferrari Dino 206 GTV, for example, produced around 185 horsepower – significantly less than the multi-air system's estimated output. And yet, despite its relatively modest power output, the Dino was renowned for its exceptional handling and agility.

In many ways, the multi-air system can be seen as a modern interpretation of this classic approach to sports car design. By prioritizing efficiency and adaptability over outright power, the designers have created a car that's both fast and agile – yet still easy to drive and enjoy. Whether cruising on the highway or carving through twisty roads, the multi-air system makes it possible for drivers to experience the thrill of high-performance driving in a way that's both exciting and accessible.

Interestingly, the idea behind this system is often misunderstood by enthusiasts who view it as simply being an excuse for underpowered engines. However, nothing could be further from the truth. By using advanced technology to optimize engine performance, the multi-air system makes it possible to deliver exceptional acceleration and responsiveness while still achieving impressive fuel efficiency and low emissions.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the multi-air system is its ability to make a car feel both smaller and more powerful at the same time. The designers have achieved this by using clever engineering tricks and advanced materials to minimize weight and maximize performance.

Take, for example, the engine itself. Instead of building a massive, heavy powerplant that would compromise the car's agility and maneuverability, the engineers opted for a more compact design that still delivers impressive results. This approach not only saves weight but also helps to reduce emissions and improve fuel efficiency – making it an attractive option for drivers who prioritize both performance and practicality.

Of course, no discussion of high-performance cars would be complete without mentioning the importance of sound. While some might argue that a loud or obtrusive exhaust note is essential to a car's performance credentials, others prefer a more subtle approach that emphasizes refinement and elegance. In this regard, the multi-air system is a triumph – producing a sound that's both smooth and satisfying, even under high power demands.

Interestingly, driving this car was a real treat. The manual transmission made it possible to really engage with the gearbox and experience the full range of engine characters. It was clear that designers had put a great deal of thought into creating a truly engaging driving experience – one that would appeal to drivers who value both performance and practicality.

In conclusion, the multi-air system is a true revolution in high-performance engineering. By using advanced technology to optimize engine performance, the designers have created a car that's both fast and agile – yet still easy to drive and enjoy. Whether cruising on the highway or carving through twisty roads, the multi-air system makes it possible for drivers to experience the thrill of high-performance driving in a way that's both exciting and accessible.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enone two three turn around just turn around welcome to episode of jay leno's garage you might remember a while back uh we had the fiat boys come by we saw the truck going by and we flagged them down and they brought one of these to the garage but we didn't get a chance to drive it because they weren't officially on the road yet well now they are and we're going to drive this in just a minute and let's bring in tim kaniskis he's head of uh fiat north america is that right tim how you doing great to meet you good to see you give us a brief update on the car you know i've got my fiat 500 which i love and it's it's a lot of fun and this is kind of like that maybe on steroids a little bit 160 horsepower 160 horse 170 pound-feet of torque yeah this is the uh the wicked cousin of the regular 500 this car is totally different than the regular 500 forget about everything you know about that car the only thing the same is the sheet metal everything else we've touched the suspension the exhaust the engine transmission everything um as you can see it's got all the carlos abarth uh badging on there carlos abarth was an austrian who moved to italy and uh loved italian cars he built exhaust systems and uh even built some of his own cars with zagato always using fiat of course and of course it's one of the great names in in in automotive history and it's it's great to see it being brought back again uh let's see what's different about the dashboard you've all seen the 500 this one well you got your uh turbo boost gauge there a little thicker steering wheel huh thicker steering wheel flat bottom yeah more aggressive driving it stays out here more of a driver's seat bolstered seats got the fancy pedals down there and it still gets you said 34 miles per gallon 34 miles per gallon 28 in the city yeah i mean i think that's really what the future of sports cars are going to be you know uh well the striping the paint work the body kit's different okay yeah the rear fascia is different yeah yeah the diffuser in the back the dual exhaust obviously the bigger spoiler for the downforce right right if you come around the front obviously different spoiler in the front because we have twin intercoolers so we have to have a new front spoiler so we can let the air in the intercooler's right here lets the hot air out right uh actually we've taken every advantage to keep the car cool and for performance even the badge is functional this allows air into the engine let's open the engine compartment can you open it up far sure there we go there we go okay don't plan on doing a lot of work in here yourself boy they really get everything in there don't they you got your heat shield over here even your batteries protected your battery's right up here but everything's right here we can get to it battery fluid engine oil washer fluid or overflow rather coolant washer fluid it's all right up here it's it's amazing how space efficient these are is that an extra set of keys hidden in there look at that well i thought you know yeah that's pretty good little place to keep an extra spare kit of keys how about that tell me about the brakes are the brakes different than the standard fiat brakes are different than the standard fiat much bigger brakes yeah this car has the optional 17-inch forged aluminum wheels okay oh 17-inch what are they normally 16 is standard 17 is the option okay and you got to the rotors are painted red just like a ferrari it's the same company right same company same company there you go very cool very cool well we covered a lot of this stuff when we when the guys were here we they had a red one here take a look we'll give you a brief review of that one again well you know back when i was a kid there were all kinds of exciting italian cars you could buy for reasonable money alfa romeo the 124 spider even the little 850 spider but lately italian exotic cars are hundreds of thousands of dollars there aren't any inexpensive fun italian cars and that's what's great about this it brings that whole tradition back absolutely and it's i i'm not going to say it's as much fun to drive as a ferrari but in a lot of ways it is because boy it's just got all kinds of power it's a fantastic car to drive nice and really one of the nicest touches too is it's got it's got a different uh it's got the stability control program which is again set up for track driving so you've got kind of the full on the wider parameters then you can actually have a full off setting as well so take it out of the tracks we've really done a lot of track testing the car is extremely capable on the track it's going to show best on kind of short tighter tracks i love my little white fiat 500 because it's serial number two number one went to the boss i have number two is it worth it to upgrade i don't know let's take a ride and see i think it might be the car this size an additional 50 horsepower makes a big difference that what it is 50 actually it's 60 more than this 60 more than stock so stock is what 101 something like that this is 160. 101 this is 160. what you're really feeling is the torque though it's 170 pound feet of torque because we have the multi-air in here oh it does have the multi-air huh that's the first application of turbo okay now they they sell the two-cylinder version in europe correct but they don't sell the twin air here no we've had a lot of people asking for it though yeah i know everybody seems very curious about it the multi-air is actually a very complicated valve train system yeah instead of using variable valve timing you actually electronic and hydraulic control the intake valve completely so you can have under high acceleration or maximum performance you can have high duration and high lift cam right because you're completely controlling the intake valve independent then when you don't need it you can actually dial that back and get low emissions and high fuel economy this car actually gets 34 miles per gallon yeah it does fit a little meatier a little beefier you got your turbo pounds per square what's what what are we putting on this turbo how many pounds you're putting through here this will run about 18 but it depends on wow 18. but it's it modifies itself depending on the conditions right high altitude low altitude it'll change and it's not a set pressure yeah yeah the idea is to to maintain a consistent torque output level so it'll vary the boost to maintain the landscape now does this have like a solenoid that opens the exhaust valve is it just pretty much that way all the time no it's actually straight through exhaust there is no exhaust oh there's no doubt to speak of in the car oh that's interesting great sound you know it's funny this would have been one of the fastest sports cars of the 60s or 70s this would have blown the doors off any triumph or mg back in the day and you think of it as a small car but you know it's actually quite a big car inside and even in one of my third gear tremendous amount of power look at that torque you know there's an old saying it's fun to drive a slower car fast in a lot of ways it is to drive a fast car fast and not that this is a slow car but you can really experience you know going through the gearbox hearing it rev you know when you're when you're in the mclaren or xeon 1 corvette and you're maxing out in second gear you're already in jail you see why you get 34 miles per gallon even in fifth gear you're barely turning 2300 or 2400 at 60. here's another cool thing about this car let's say you have to change direction really quickly just grab the handbrake she feels good you know i really think this is kind of what the future of sports cards will be because let's face it with gas getting up to five and six bucks a gallon uh and these new fuel standards of 54 miles per gallon which is coming what in the next 10 or 15 years uh you're going to be looking at small high performance engines like this that are extremely efficient and very lightweight you know they used to uh people always say oh i want to hover your car but you know when henry ford built the model t he used to tell people have you ever seen a fat man outrun a skinny man you don't know and it's really true let's take it up the highway put it in fifth gear going 60 revs are about 2500 rpm so the engine's barely working and it's got enough torque to pull you along just fine boy it gets really quiet i mean we're having a conversation in here and it's not windy there's no wind noise there's no buffeting it's really a lot of fun to drive we spent a lot of time to make sure that under acceleration it sounded like a very high performance car yeah but cruising on the highway no drone right a lot quieter i would guess now don't get mad at me and don't write letters but i would say this is really just about as quick as a uh one of those ferrari dinos from the from the uh 60s and 70s well how many horsepower was that what were they 185 160 something like that it was below 200 so yeah it was one it was less than 200 and was probably heavier than this if you know the answer put it in our comment section i'd be curious to hear what you say i know some ferrari guys who get mad at me but i must speak the truth i'm so glad this car is only available in the manual transmission because it really is a joy to drive you know if you like driving it's so much fun just gearbox just kind of sneaks in and you move through the gears and it's very relaxing you know i'm sure they'll probably come up with some paddle shifter for it in the future but if you like to drive you enjoy going through a gear box boy it's a lot of funone two three turn around just turn around welcome to episode of jay leno's garage you might remember a while back uh we had the fiat boys come by we saw the truck going by and we flagged them down and they brought one of these to the garage but we didn't get a chance to drive it because they weren't officially on the road yet well now they are and we're going to drive this in just a minute and let's bring in tim kaniskis he's head of uh fiat north america is that right tim how you doing great to meet you good to see you give us a brief update on the car you know i've got my fiat 500 which i love and it's it's a lot of fun and this is kind of like that maybe on steroids a little bit 160 horsepower 160 horse 170 pound-feet of torque yeah this is the uh the wicked cousin of the regular 500 this car is totally different than the regular 500 forget about everything you know about that car the only thing the same is the sheet metal everything else we've touched the suspension the exhaust the engine transmission everything um as you can see it's got all the carlos abarth uh badging on there carlos abarth was an austrian who moved to italy and uh loved italian cars he built exhaust systems and uh even built some of his own cars with zagato always using fiat of course and of course it's one of the great names in in in automotive history and it's it's great to see it being brought back again uh let's see what's different about the dashboard you've all seen the 500 this one well you got your uh turbo boost gauge there a little thicker steering wheel huh thicker steering wheel flat bottom yeah more aggressive driving it stays out here more of a driver's seat bolstered seats got the fancy pedals down there and it still gets you said 34 miles per gallon 34 miles per gallon 28 in the city yeah i mean i think that's really what the future of sports cars are going to be you know uh well the striping the paint work the body kit's different okay yeah the rear fascia is different yeah yeah the diffuser in the back the dual exhaust obviously the bigger spoiler for the downforce right right if you come around the front obviously different spoiler in the front because we have twin intercoolers so we have to have a new front spoiler so we can let the air in the intercooler's right here lets the hot air out right uh actually we've taken every advantage to keep the car cool and for performance even the badge is functional this allows air into the engine let's open the engine compartment can you open it up far sure there we go there we go okay don't plan on doing a lot of work in here yourself boy they really get everything in there don't they you got your heat shield over here even your batteries protected your battery's right up here but everything's right here we can get to it battery fluid engine oil washer fluid or overflow rather coolant washer fluid it's all right up here it's it's amazing how space efficient these are is that an extra set of keys hidden in there look at that well i thought you know yeah that's pretty good little place to keep an extra spare kit of keys how about that tell me about the brakes are the brakes different than the standard fiat brakes are different than the standard fiat much bigger brakes yeah this car has the optional 17-inch forged aluminum wheels okay oh 17-inch what are they normally 16 is standard 17 is the option okay and you got to the rotors are painted red just like a ferrari it's the same company right same company same company there you go very cool very cool well we covered a lot of this stuff when we when the guys were here we they had a red one here take a look we'll give you a brief review of that one again well you know back when i was a kid there were all kinds of exciting italian cars you could buy for reasonable money alfa romeo the 124 spider even the little 850 spider but lately italian exotic cars are hundreds of thousands of dollars there aren't any inexpensive fun italian cars and that's what's great about this it brings that whole tradition back absolutely and it's i i'm not going to say it's as much fun to drive as a ferrari but in a lot of ways it is because boy it's just got all kinds of power it's a fantastic car to drive nice and really one of the nicest touches too is it's got it's got a different uh it's got the stability control program which is again set up for track driving so you've got kind of the full on the wider parameters then you can actually have a full off setting as well so take it out of the tracks we've really done a lot of track testing the car is extremely capable on the track it's going to show best on kind of short tighter tracks i love my little white fiat 500 because it's serial number two number one went to the boss i have number two is it worth it to upgrade i don't know let's take a ride and see i think it might be the car this size an additional 50 horsepower makes a big difference that what it is 50 actually it's 60 more than this 60 more than stock so stock is what 101 something like that this is 160. 101 this is 160. what you're really feeling is the torque though it's 170 pound feet of torque because we have the multi-air in here oh it does have the multi-air huh that's the first application of turbo okay now they they sell the two-cylinder version in europe correct but they don't sell the twin air here no we've had a lot of people asking for it though yeah i know everybody seems very curious about it the multi-air is actually a very complicated valve train system yeah instead of using variable valve timing you actually electronic and hydraulic control the intake valve completely so you can have under high acceleration or maximum performance you can have high duration and high lift cam right because you're completely controlling the intake valve independent then when you don't need it you can actually dial that back and get low emissions and high fuel economy this car actually gets 34 miles per gallon yeah it does fit a little meatier a little beefier you got your turbo pounds per square what's what what are we putting on this turbo how many pounds you're putting through here this will run about 18 but it depends on wow 18. but it's it modifies itself depending on the conditions right high altitude low altitude it'll change and it's not a set pressure yeah yeah the idea is to to maintain a consistent torque output level so it'll vary the boost to maintain the landscape now does this have like a solenoid that opens the exhaust valve is it just pretty much that way all the time no it's actually straight through exhaust there is no exhaust oh there's no doubt to speak of in the car oh that's interesting great sound you know it's funny this would have been one of the fastest sports cars of the 60s or 70s this would have blown the doors off any triumph or mg back in the day and you think of it as a small car but you know it's actually quite a big car inside and even in one of my third gear tremendous amount of power look at that torque you know there's an old saying it's fun to drive a slower car fast in a lot of ways it is to drive a fast car fast and not that this is a slow car but you can really experience you know going through the gearbox hearing it rev you know when you're when you're in the mclaren or xeon 1 corvette and you're maxing out in second gear you're already in jail you see why you get 34 miles per gallon even in fifth gear you're barely turning 2300 or 2400 at 60. here's another cool thing about this car let's say you have to change direction really quickly just grab the handbrake she feels good you know i really think this is kind of what the future of sports cards will be because let's face it with gas getting up to five and six bucks a gallon uh and these new fuel standards of 54 miles per gallon which is coming what in the next 10 or 15 years uh you're going to be looking at small high performance engines like this that are extremely efficient and very lightweight you know they used to uh people always say oh i want to hover your car but you know when henry ford built the model t he used to tell people have you ever seen a fat man outrun a skinny man you don't know and it's really true let's take it up the highway put it in fifth gear going 60 revs are about 2500 rpm so the engine's barely working and it's got enough torque to pull you along just fine boy it gets really quiet i mean we're having a conversation in here and it's not windy there's no wind noise there's no buffeting it's really a lot of fun to drive we spent a lot of time to make sure that under acceleration it sounded like a very high performance car yeah but cruising on the highway no drone right a lot quieter i would guess now don't get mad at me and don't write letters but i would say this is really just about as quick as a uh one of those ferrari dinos from the from the uh 60s and 70s well how many horsepower was that what were they 185 160 something like that it was below 200 so yeah it was one it was less than 200 and was probably heavier than this if you know the answer put it in our comment section i'd be curious to hear what you say i know some ferrari guys who get mad at me but i must speak the truth i'm so glad this car is only available in the manual transmission because it really is a joy to drive you know if you like driving it's so much fun just gearbox just kind of sneaks in and you move through the gears and it's very relaxing you know i'm sure they'll probably come up with some paddle shifter for it in the future but if you like to drive you enjoy going through a gear box boy it's a lot of fun\n"