With the introduction of CO2 emissions legislation or fuel economy standards in Europe and many countries, significant effort is being made to improve spark ignition gasoline engines because of their dominant market share in passenger cars and potential for better fuel economy. Amongst several approaches, the engine downsizing technology has been adopted by the automotive companies as one of the most effective methods to reduce fuel consumption of gasoline engines. However, aggressive engine downsizing is constrained by excessive thermal and mechanical loads as well as knocking combustion and low speed pre-ignition (also known as super-knock). In order to overcome such difficulties, a gasoline direct injection single cylinder engine was modified to run under the two-stroke cycle by operating the intake and exhaust valves around bottom dead centre (BDC) at every crankshaft revolution. The combustion products were scavenged by means of a reversed tumble flow of compressed air during the positive valve overlap period at BDC. The engine output was determined by the charging and trapping efficiencies, which were directly influenced by the intake and exhaust valve timings and boost pressures. In this research a valve timing optimisation study was performed using a fully flexible valve train unit, where the intake and exhaust valve timings were advanced and retarded independently at several speeds and loads. A supercharger was used to vary the load by increasing the intake pressure. The effects of valve timing and boost pressure in this two-stroke poppet valve engine were investigated by a detailed analysis of the gas exchange process and combustion heat release. Gaseous and smoke emissions were measured and analysed. The results confirmed that the two-stroke cycle operation enabled the indicated mean effective pressure to reach 1.2 MPa (equivalent to 2.4 MPa in a four-stroke cycle) with an in-cylinder pressure below 7 MPa at an engine speed as low as 800 rpm. The engine operation was limited by scavenging inefficiencies and short time available for proper air-fuel mixing at high speeds using the current fuel injector. The large amounts of hot residual gas trapped induced controlled auto-ignition combustion at high speeds, and thus the abrupt heat release limited higher loads. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.