The most legendary engines ever built. The ones that changed everything. Welcome to the Engine’s Syndicate.
Honda did it, Ferrari just patented it Quick question for you. Sit down with a coffee. Picture a three-litre, six-cylinder inline, non-circular pistons in oval form, eight valves per cylinder, two spark plugs per cylinder, two connecting rods per piston, redline at 15,000 rpm. Why does that engine not exist in any car anywhere on … Read more
Triflux: the Lancia engine with the strangest cylinder head ever bolted to a block Quick test. If I asked you to name the first car ever to use a properly sequential twin-turbocharger system — the kind where a small turbo spools up at low revs and a bigger one kicks in higher up — what … Read more
Light Speed Transmission (LST): the gearbox that doesn’t shift, it teleports Ask any engineer at Porsche, Ferrari or McLaren what the fastest-shifting gearbox is, and for twenty years the answer was settled: the dual-clutch. The DSG, the PDK, the lot. While you’re in third, the box already has fourth loaded up on the second clutch, … Read more
Freevalve: the camless engine, told properly Let’s get something out of the way before we go any further, because nearly every English-language piece on this engine starts with the same lie. Koenigsegg did not invent the camless engine. They are not the first to try it. The idea of binning the camshaft and operating valves … Read more
Freevalve: the camless engine, told properly Let’s get something out of the way before we go any further, because nearly every English-language piece on this engine starts with the same lie. Koenigsegg did not invent the camless engine. They are not the first to try it. The idea of binning the camshaft and operating valves … Read more
Colombo V12: The V12 Drawn on a Garden Table That Stayed Inside a Ferrari for Forty-Two Years Some engines get designed in proper engineering departments. Glass-walled offices, slide rules, scheduled meetings, espresso machines, the lot. And then there’s this other one, which was sketched in pencil in Milan, in August nineteen forty-five, while Italy was … Read more
Aramco’s hybrid engine is a masterpiece. It’s also a trap. You don’t expect this kind of news from Saudi Aramco. You expect it from Toyota. From Honda. From some stealth outfit in Stuttgart with a whiteboard full of equations. You don’t expect the world’s largest oil producer to walk into Detroit, hire a French race-engine … Read more
Hot Vapor: The Engine a Mechanic With No Degree Built in 1984 Was the HCCI Mazda Spent 35 More Years Trying to Mass-Produce Daytona Beach, Florida. 1984. Behind the back door of the workshop Smokey Yunick called The Best Damn Garage in Town, a Pontiac Fiero sits up on jack stands. Under the engine cover … Read more
Maserati cooked its own engine, regulations took the heat out Some engines explain themselves. Others hit you. The Nettuno does the first better than almost anything else alive. The second — no. And that’s exactly what you need to know before someone sells it to you as the future of Maserati. Because the future is … Read more
Ford Boss 302 vs Boss 429: Ford Built Two Race Engines for Two Different Wars. And Won Both. In 1969, Ford presented the world with two of the most radical engines it had ever installed in a road car. Both carried the “Boss” name. Both lived in the Mustang. Both existed for reasons that had … Read more
The 428 Cobra Jet: The Engine Ford Invented Because of a Rebel Dealer Some engines are born in high-tech engineering labs. Some are the result of years of strategic planning and multi-million dollar budgets. And then there are engines born because a dealer in Rhode Island got tired of watching his Mustangs lose at stoplights … Read more
The Subaru Boxer Engine: Not Too Reliable, But Tremendously Effective Some engines earn your respect through their reliability. Some earn it through their performance. And then there’s the Subaru boxer, which earns your respect despite everything, because what it does well, it does so extraordinarily well that you forgive everything else. Subaru’s horizontally-opposed engine — … Read more
