Forget About VAZ-4s And Japanese V6s - We Found Real Monsters

2023 Author: Natalie MacDonald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-11-26 13:59

The inline-four, the plump V6, the rare V10 and the 12-cylinder beast are both adored and a sign of status. At this point, the account of motor "pots", as a rule, ends. But if you dig deeper, you can significantly expand it … After all, not long ago engineers were hiding real monsters under car hoods! Take a look at these incredible rigs and check out their performance.

Bugatti: between 16 and 18

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Experimental naturally aspirated W18 Bugatti: 563 hp, 650 Nm and 315 kg

Born in 2005, the Veyron's 1,000-horsepower hypercar has brought back the charm of a large and powerful engine. The serial eight-liter W16, which consisted of two VR-shaped "eights" located at right angles to each other, came out quite compact and at the same time terribly powerful and hot. Stories of how a red-hot engine nearly burned a test laboratory in Wolfsburg have long entered the collection of Bugatti legends.

But initially, the creation of a hyper-powerful and super-fast car assumed a larger motor. The initiator of the program, Ferdinand Piech, relied on an 18-cylinder "heart": it seemed to him even more grandiose and wild. The engine was "assembled" from three in-line "sixes" and had a volume of 6.3 liters, but it remained atmospheric and developed 563 horsepower and 650 Newton meters, ridiculous by today's standards.

It is this engine that can be found on the Bugatti EB118 concept coupe, EB218 sedan and almost-almost Veyron with an index of 18.4 - all of them were born shortly before the millennium and prepared the public for the appearance of the main hypercar of the planet. However, Pich's team soon moved away from games with eighteen cylinders, preferring a new, more compact W16 with a quartet of turbines. It was he who ultimately led the Bugatti cars to the triumph of power and speed.

Cizeta: V16 across the car

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Motor supercar CizetMoroder V16T: two V8 from Lamborghini, connected in series

If there is no money for long engineering surveys, you can try to pair two existing engines. In fact, this is how the 16-cylinder setup for the CizetMoroder supercar you see in the photo was born in the nineties.

The designers Claudio Zampolli and Oliviero Pedrazzi did not complicate anything and docked a pair of massive "eights" from the Lamborghini Urraco P300S sports coupe. But not without problems at all. The designers placed a long 64-valve power tandem with a volume of six liters in the center of the car … turning it across! And since the engine rested against the body from both ends, I had to tinker with the mechanical transmission and attachments. As a result, the engine bay has become a collection of the best "quotes" of the automotive layout.

The serial V16T boasted a two-meter width and developed 540 horsepower, which was enough for a sprint of four seconds to a hundred and reaching 328 kilometers per hour. In total, two dozen of these machines were assembled by the hands of CizetAutomobili specialists. One of them was recently put up for sale for 55 million rubles.

BMW: 16 cylinders and holes in the trunk

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If history had gone differently, modern hunters for youngtimers would have been fighting a universal battle for one of the serial "sevens" with a 16-cylinder engine. Beauty! In the 1980s, the Germans, led by a man named Lange, worked hard to install a 6.7-liter V16 engine in their cars. True, things did not go beyond the prototype under the working title "Goldfish".

An inconspicuous-looking sedan 750iL (except for the strange "ears" on the rear fenders) concealed the installation, born twenty years before the "Veyron". As a basis, BMW took the five-liter V12 M70 with an aluminum block, familiar from the 850CSi coupe and the McLaren F1 supercar, and "increased" it to four cylinders. The working volume increased by another liter and a half, and the power increased to 408 horsepower. Peak torque reached 637 Nm.

In 1988, the Goldfisch sedan, equipped with a miracle engine, entered the tests for the first time. In terms of dynamic performance, the new version was noticeably superior to the 12-cylinder version. In comparison with the original M70 engine, the new one made it possible to remove one and a half seconds from acceleration to "hundred" (6 seconds exactly) and break through 300 km / h. At the same time, sixteen cylinders under the hood required much more cold air - that's why the rear fenders and the trunk lid were cut out for the sedan, having built large air intakes and air ducts.

Tests have shown that with more attention to cooling, the new engine can still go into series. However, the company did not dare to bring the unit to the market and thus unleash an engineering battle with other manufacturers. The experimental V16 was then tried to be addressed to the Bentley Mulsanne limousine as a replacement for the British G8, but this did not work either. Work ceased, and the Germans themselves focused on boosting the original V12, which made it possible to obtain similar power figures with a smaller size and volume.

Mercedes-Benz: three engines in one

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It would be foolish to assume that the Bavarians' neighbors and perennial rivals will not be interested in the noise coming from the BMW test site, and will not start preparing a symmetrical response to the threat. By the early nineties, within the walls of Mercedes-Benz, a unit was invented that could plug both the Munich V16 and the experimental Goldfish along with it. The installation, indexed M216, consisted of eighteen cylinders, which were assembled by combining three in-line "sixes" at once and placing them at an angle of 75.5 degrees to each other! The drawings of the motor horrified even those who were not used to being intimidated by complex mechanisms - for example, the journalists of the Auto Motor und Sport publication, who had the good fortune to appreciate the scale of the work.

According to the documentation, the new engine was planned to be produced in two specifications: civil (490 horsepower) and track, which was supposed to receive a cylinder head with four valves per cylinder and produce 200 more forces. However, Mercedes-Benz engineers did not assemble a single 18-cylinder unit. As in the case of BMW, it seemed less costly and more efficient to work with the serial V12 - that is, with the M120 engine for the "six hundredth" S-class, which at that time had brilliant prospects and huge potential for boost.

BRM: 1.5 liter V16 crumb

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One and a half liter "formula" BRM P15 with sixteen cylinders inside. Weighing two hundred kilograms, the supercharged engine had tiny 0.09-liter cylinders.

The "heart" of modern Formula 1 is a compact V-shaped "six", which with a volume of 1.6 liters produces under a thousand horsepower. Veteran fans, however, remember the glorious days of loud V8s and V10s, and many, many years ago, much wilder versions of power plants were found under the fairings of lightweight racing shells. One of these was recently brought back to life by British mechanics.

The working volume of the BRM engine developed in 1947 is not impressive - only one and a half liters. At the same time, its mass exceeds 180 kilograms, and sixteen pistons rush inside the cylinder block at once, giving out from 400 to 600 forces with the help of a Rolls-Royce compressor.

The process of creating the motor in the mid-forties spawned a wide communication network, which included more than 350 companies - from the already mentioned Rolls-Royce, who developed the pressurization system, to David Brown, which supplied gears.

The multi-cylinder engine, complex in design, turned out to be endowed with an equally complex character, which became obvious from the first seasons. The BRM Type 15 car equipped with this engine could not start before the race, break the connecting rod or lift the cylinders on the way to the finish line. But be that as it may, the "gunpowder" in the V16 was above the roof, as legendary racer Juan Manuel Fangio often said: "The Type 15 was the most fantastic car I ever drove."

Devel Sixteen: 12 liters and 5000 forces

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More than seven years have passed since the little-known Arab firm Defining Extreme Vehicles Car Industry announced a carbon megacar with a V16 at the Dubai auto show. But the figure of five thousand "horses" taken from twelve liters of working volume still seems fierce today. Two years after the loud words, the manufacturer witnessed the installation itself and proved that he keeps his word. The 12.3-liter 16-cylinder V-engine for Devel was developed by the American company Steve Morris Engines. And during the tests, the turbo engine almost "worked" the dynamometer, producing 4515 hp. and 4770 Nm traction.

However, the demonstration of the potential of the monster motor was followed by dozens of releases about how cool and fast Devel Sixteen can be. Considering the forecast of five thousand "horses" that came true (in 2017, the American dino-stand still allowed to produce the coveted 5007 hp), Defining Extreme Vehicles Car Industry began to fantasize about a maximum speed of 560 km / h and a rapid-fire rate of 1, An 8-second acceleration to 97 km / h, which their car is capable of. However, the project is still far from being implemented.

Motor X20: wedding of two V10s

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Experimental X20 Boxer Motor (Source: Drivetribe)

We take a two-liter V10 from a British coupe, put another one next to it and get what both the Bugatti Chiron and the CizetV16T will take off their hats to, and the experimental Cadillac Sixteen coupe with sixteen "pots".

The special charm of the 20-cylinder (!) Power plant, invented by Villiers from the British Norfolk, is that it has nothing to do with the "crowd" of V-shaped engines and is actually considered a horizontal "opposed". Very, very cool "opposite". The engine has four rows of five cylinders and extremely unusual dimensions, allowing to achieve an extremely low center of mass. At the same time, from four liters of working volume, from 260 to 500 horsepower are removed here, and 10,000 revolutions per minute are considered maximum.

Both two-liter "tens" for the X20 engine are taken from the small-scale Connaught Type-D turbo coupe of 2006, and their two crankshafts are united by a six-speed "mechanics" taken from the Lamborghini Gallardo. In general, game. The guys from Villiers have not yet managed to fit a worthy donor for the engine, so the X-Twentieth is still a unique engineering miracle, and not the heart of some crazy supercar. But it seems to be only a matter of time.