Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecky
Honda started water-cooling their exhaust manifolds in 1999 with the Insight. The purpose was not to improve economy by any interaction with the gases, but the packaging allowed the catalyst to be placed right at the exhaust outlet on the engine, and the engine got up to operating temperature far more quickly.
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Well getting the engine up to temperature fast would help, but I do think lowering the exhaust gas volume helped too... if they didn't downsize the exhaust and muffler system too.
ie: Any exhaust can be considered more 'freeflow' if it only has to handle ~half the gas volume.
But the bean counters may have told the engineers to downsize the exhaust.