I agree with Mr. McManis. I
I agree with Mr. McManis. I have been watching the car industry for better than 50 years -- that's right, I'm an old car guy -- but it doesn't stop me from seeing sense when it presents itself.
Look at Ford's embrace of the Ecoboost technology for many of its trucks. Ecoboost is a fancy way of saying six-cylinder engines with turbos bolted on. There's nothing wrong with it and the pickups perform well; trailer decently, and tow reasonably. They may not have the capability of big diesels for towing, etc, but, nonetheless, within their limits they are fine.
Now, over the last 5 decades I have seen pundits, soothsayers, fakirs, and others run down turbos and four-cylinder or six-cylinder engines only to find that a few years later, the technology that they were riding was center market and was not considered "garbage."
Whether the vehicles are pickups -- the market's most popular pickup, the F150 -- which offer turbo technology, or sporty vehicles that have lopped the number of cylinders down by two or four and upped the game with turbos, or any other combination of markets, turbo technology is fairly misunderstood by many power motorheads who think 8 cylinders is the only way to move a pickup. The market should be left on its own to prove or disprove various predictions. I think, though, the future is in smaller engines and turbocharging (some prefer supercharging, to me it's a coin toss) and even EV tech (Ford is promising an F150 hybrid. I've seen the spy shots and it looks very real, to me.