Ford is developing its smallest engine ever, a wee little three-cylinder mill with the displacement of a soda bottle.

The tiny engine is part of the automaker’s push to increase the fuel efficiency of its lineup by building smaller, but more powerful, engines. Despite its itty-bitty size, Ford says the turbocharged 1.0-liter Ecoboost engine will provide the torque and power of a 1.8 1.6-liter four-cylinder.

“The 1.0-liter engine is a little dynamo,” Derrick Kuzak, Ford group vice president of Global Product Development, said in a statement.

Engineers at the Dunton Technical Centre in the United Kingdom have been working on the engine for a couple of years, and it first appeared in the Start concept car (pictured avove) at the 2010 Beijing auto show. We’ve seen it more recently in the B-Max at the Geneva auto show earlier this year.

The biggest goal was, of course, reducing fuel consumption without sacrificing power. Engineers focused on increasing thermal efficiency and reducing friction, especially when the engine is warming up.