Press "Play" to view the video of the winner.

Having accumulated 354 points from 65 judges, VW’s innovative new-generation TSI Twincharger has ended four years of BMW dominance to win the overall International Engine of the Year Award for 2009.

In what was the closest race in the history of the Awards, the Twincharger beat the 2007 and 2008 champion, BMW’s 3-litre DI Twin Turbo by four points. TSI’s triumph in the overall International Engine of the Year, Green Engine and 1-litre to 1.4-litre categories will be seen as an important victory for those backing the downsizing of internal combustion engines over other solutions such as gasoline hybrids and full electric vehicles.

Most notable was how well VW’s 1.4-litre unit managed to gather points from markets outside Europe, with judges in North America, Asia and South America all awarding top marks. “It was an easy choice,” said international motoring journalist Peter Robinson. “TSI combines outstanding refinement with terrific performance and low consumption and emissions.” American Matt Davis was equally impressed: “Volkswagen’s 1.4-litre TSI EA111 is still way ahead of the curve, sensationally over-engineered in all the right ways, and even makes the company’s fantastic 2-litre TFSI already look like yesterday’s tech.”

The four-cylinder combines a turbocharger and supercharger in one compact unit. The result is power of up to 178bhp, but what’s most impressive is the engine’s specific power that attains 127.1bhp per litre of displacement. And with 240Nm of torque coming good at 1,500rpm, it’s easy to see why the jurors that look for performance and sporty characteristics were impressed.  

But power is just part of the story for this year’s International Engine of the Year. The TSI derivative mated to VW’s DSG system emits 144g CO2/km, and in a Golf application, fuel consumption is rated at 6.2litres/100km (45.5mpg). With those figures, it’s little wonder that TSI won.