Everybody knows that a turbo will make your car faster. But can you make an engine more efficient with a turbo? The quick answer is yes, and doubly so for a diesel engine. Simple engine physics says that the more fuel you can burn in an engine the more power it will make.
Dumping lots of diesel or petrol into an engine is easy enough. But the trick is getting the air to match. Remember you need air and fuel to make the explosion. A turbo physically rams air into the combustion chamber under pressure, which means a lot more air and thus a lot more fuel can go in, making more zoom-zoom.
But wait, more fuel should mean lower gas mileage, not higher. If you drive a turbocharged car with a lead foot, it’s true, you will use more fuel even than the same engine without the turbo. But the great thing about turbocharging is that the extra power is available on demand, but only when you demand it. This means that if you drive the car efficiently, you will use less fuel because unlike a car with a huge petrol guzzling engine that uses tons of fuel all the time, including the passing lane, your car will sip fuel and only use more in the passing lane.
