4 Extinct Car Engines and 1 That’s Making A Comeback

In the early days of the automotive industry, engineers were constantly experimenting with different engine layouts for different purposes, either for racing or just for the sake of curiosity. Through countless trials and tribulations, they’ve eventually found the best engine layouts such as the V6 and Inline 4. However, they had to get through some wonky engine configurations to get to where we are today. So here are the 4 extinct car engines that we’ll probably never see again, and one that’s getting revived from the grave.

1) W8

“What the heck is a W8 Passat”, was what I thought when I first saw this car in Australia. The W8 had a weird history. It was first seen in the 1992 Vector W8, where the engine was extremely unreliable. It then made its way under the hood of the 2004 Volkswagen Passat, and only the Passat. Its essentially 2 15 degree VR4’s just smashed together, making around 270 PS and 370nm of torque. 

Despite the W8 being known for its smoothness, owners have said that the engine needed meticulous care, particularly in oil and coolant levels, otherwise it’ll just decide that it wants to become a ticking time bomb. Moreover, the engine was never intended to stay and it was just VW’s testing ground for their next projects, leaving the W8 to bite the dust.However, VW took the lessons learnt from this and eventually developed other W Engines like the W12 used in the Bentley Continental, and the W16 in the hypercar of our generation, the Bugatti Veyron. So the next time you see a Passat on the road, just give it a salute for its sacrifice.

2) H16

Now this is a weird one. H engines haven’t been used much in the automotive industry, but have been used in aircrafts and some boats in the past. The engine has a layout of a horizontal letter H and looks similar to 2 boxer/flat engines. The most famous example of this engine layout is the BRM H16 found in the 1966 Lotus 43 Formula One racecar. 

This monstrosity was created by BRM out of curiosity for what would be the next generation F1 engines, or maybe they just had one too many pints at their local pub. It was made using 2 flat 8 engines stacked on top of each other while sharing a crankshaft. The engines even operated individually from each other and it sounds really interesting.

While the H16 looks really cool, it's quite obvious as to why we don’t see it anymore. Firstly, the vibrations from the engine were so bad that parts of the engine literally flew off mid-race, leading to some of the pistons blasting out of the block. It was also extremely heavy compared to the V8’s and V12’s of the time, as well as having a high-center of gravity. The complexity of the engine and wiring gave engineers headaches and the spare parts for the engine were extremely expensive.

It’s safe to say that this engine will never come back or make its way into production cars, but if some mad lad out there decides to build another one of these again, I ain’t complaining.

3) V5/VR5

The VR5 was the only V5-ish engine to ever make it into production cars. Technically, V5’s never existed in production cars but VR5’s did in the form of Volkswagen’s trio, the Golf, New Beetle and Passat. The engine was made by slicing one cylinder off VW’s VR6, all of the cylinders shared a single head cylinder too. Honda also made a V5 engine that was in their RC211V race motorcycle that won several titles by Valentino Rossi, but it never made it into production motorcycles. They eventually changed the V5 into a V4 and never looked back, perhaps it was for the best.

There’s a multitude of reasons as to why the V5 didn’t take off. Firstly, the balancing issues on this engine were impossible to fix due to the odd number of cylinders, making it naturally heavy on only one side. Even with the VR5’s balancing solution with the off-center piston position on the crankshaft, it would remain unbalanced and create heavy vibrations. Another problem would be the fixability of the car, most VR5 owners just couldn’t find anyone to repair their car because the engine layout was so rare that no one knew how to fix them. 

So with that, the V5/VR5 kicked the bucket in 2007 and were never seen again. Which is quite sad considering that their inline-5 brother now lives on in the heart of the Audi RS3, an amazing sports car.

4) Inline 8

The Inline 8 is probably the most widespread among the engines in this list, as it was actually used by multiple brands during the 1930’s and 40’s. Race and Luxury cars such as the Alfa Romeo 8C, Mercedes M125 and Bugatti Royale used these engines due to their smoothness and much higher power output compared to the inline 6’s of the time. It was also really straightforward to manufacture because it was just 8 cylinders in a straight line.

However, despite these perks it had many flaws. The first being its length, which was so long most cars actually had to be designed around it, making inline 8 cars to look like a shoe. It also had a heavy engine block and a massive crankshaft, which is not good for motorsports as lightness is a big factor in gaining positions on the track. The engine was also inefficient and it drank a ton of oil, leaving automakers to find an alternative engine layout. The last car to use a straight 8 was the 1954 Packard.

The inline 8 was later phased out in favor of the V8, which was much lighter, compact and energy efficient, leading us to where we are today with the ‘Murican V8 pride. The story of the inline 8 was quite humbling as it was a stepping stone to the future engines but was just not good enough for it to stay as long as the V8 did.

5) Rotary

The Wankel Rotary, or commonly known as the “Spinning Dorito” in the car community, is probably one of the most popular engines besides its inline counterpart. For some history, Felix Wankel was trying to make a new type of engine that wasn’t piston based, therefore he made an oval shape block with a spinning triangle in the middle that has a crankshaft turning it from the center. The result was an engine that not only made high power but it also revved to the moon, it even had a signature engine sound that could only be described as spaceship-like. It was an engineering marvel and the patent for this was sold to many manufacturers, such as General Motors, Mercedes, Citroen and Mazda.

However, the engine’s design soon saw cracks as more and more cars had serious engine failures, leading to manufacturers giving up on it entirely. The first problem was that it was really oil and fuel consuming as its combustion process was really wasteful. The other thing was that the apexes from the triangle rotor would rub against the block and corrode the walls, ultimately resulting in catastrophic failure. Mazda would be the only one that persevered and believed in the engine, finding new ways to curb the issues found in it, their most notable innovation being the ceramic apex seals to prevent wall corrosion. This gave birth to the legendary RX series, which many enthusiasts know and love to this day. All good things come to an end though, as despite the innovations that Mazda made, the engine couldn’t pass emission regulations and they couldn’t completely fix the engine’s shortcomings, leading to its death in the last RX car, the RX-8.

Mazda still hasn’t given up though, as now they have a heritage program where people can order parts from them as well as the revival of the engine seen in the MX-30 (just as a generator though). They’ve even announced that the engine will make a comeback in their RX-Vision concept with a 2 rotary hybrid setup, so it may not seem so bleak for the Rotary anymore. 

Although these engines are no more, all of them are a marvel of engineering that was a stepping stone to something even greater. These engines were the reason why we have standard engine layouts today. So even though they were funny engine configurations, pay some respects to these fossils as without them, we’d probably be stuck with a H4 engine in a Proton Saga.

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