Customers expect and deserve consistent quality. While Chrysler Group’s corporate quality reputation hasn’t been where it should be in recent years – that is definitely changing. Take the new Pentastar V-6 engine as an example.

In December, Ward’s AutoWorld named the Pentastar engine one of the 10 best for 2010: “[T]he Pentastar is the best modern engine Chrysler has produced.”

Awards like that are great – in fact it was a target for the engineering team – but customer feedback is more important.

“The Pentastar engine was designed to address five important customer attributes: refinement, fuel efficiency, environment, performance and cost of ownership,” explained Chris Cowland, head of the Pentastar Engine Program for Chrysler Group.

And, Cowland said, the Pentastar engine accomplished its mission. From a quality assurance point of view, Chrysler reduced the number of major components on the new Pentastar V-6 to around 30, down from 189 on the seven engines it replaces.

On the earth-friendly front, the Pentastar is a lead-free engine and has the ability to meet the PZEV (partial zero emissions vehicle) standard that will be required in California in the near future.

Plus, oil filters can be recycled because of how they’re constructed. That’s good news on the environmental front and cost of ownership. Owners also will like the fact that vehicles with the Pentastar have a recommended oil change interval of 8000 miles, rather than the typical 6000 mile interval on the engines it replaces.

One other feature is the Pentastar’s use of dual independent cam phasers. These play into the Pentastar’s refinement, fuel efficiency, environment and performance advantages.

World-beater

In developing the Pentastar engine, Cowland said his team benchmarked it against the best engines in the world.

“The Pentastar meets or beats those benchmarks,” he said.

 
Other extra efforts in the engine’s development include “more CAE hours than ever before” and rigorous testing, including a 60-minute loaded dynamometer quality check on the first 10,000 production engines, according to Cowland.

The first Pentastar V-6 is a 3.6 liter version, and replaces seven V-6 engines in the Chrysler family. It has the flexibility to range from three to four liters, and will be rolled out in 13 Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep® and Ram vehicles by 2013. It’s already in the 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee.

By 2014, the Pentastar V-6 should account for more than one-third of Chrysler Group powertrain systems – and be a key factor in contributing to an overall corporate fuel efficiency improvement of 25 percent.

That’s good for us, but better for you -- the customers.

The Pentastar V-6 engine is made at two brand new, state of the art Chrysler engine plants – Trenton, Mich., and Saltillo, Mexico – both with duplicate manufacturing processes, as part of Chrysler Group’s World Class Manufacturing. The seven engines it replaces were made at four plants, each with their own manufacturing process.

While Chrysler’s high quality reputation can’t be improved by just one or two projects, the Pentastar engine is proof it’s on the right path.
 

For other information on the Pentastar V-6, see our earlier post.