Vote for your pick at the bottom of the article!
Author of the article:
Clayton Seams
Published Mar 22, 2017 • Last updated Aug 02, 2023 • 6 minute read
The most powerful production engine resides in a Bugatti Chiron. The most fuel-efficient engine takes residence in a Volkswagen XL1. But both of the vehicles these engines are mounted to are so expensive and exclusive that their impact will never really reach us. We rounded up what we believed were thebest engines– not necessarily the most powerful or advanced, but engines that made an impact on the automotive landscape. Some on this list were made for 70 years, and some were produced for less than a decade.
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Top 10 best car engines of all time Back to video
These are what manybelieve to be the 10 most significant production car engines ever made. There are many other great engines that couldn’t fit on the list but you can vote for your pick of these 10 at the bottom of the page.
The Best Car Engine: Volkswagen Air-Cooled Flat-Four
Learn more about the cars
2024 Ford F-150 3.50out of 5 MSRP $49,955 to $106,975 2025 Honda CR-V 3.80out of 5 MSRP $35,725 to $42,125 editor's pick 2024 Honda Civic Sedan 3.25out of 5 MSRP $26,790 to $35,630 2024 Ford Escape 3.90out of 5 MSRP $33,049 to $47,879 2024 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 3.50out of 5 MSRP $44,899 to $86,699
Unless you’re under the age of 10, you can remember the distinct clatter of an air-cooled VW rattling along. Duringits dauntingseventy-year production run between 1936 and 2006, VW made somewhere between 20 and 30 million of these little engines. The cars they powered sparked a small-car revolution in North America. The Volkswagen Beetle was the car that brought compacts into the mainstream buyer’s mind. Ingeniously simple, these compact and lightweight engines can be fixed with basic hand tools, and parts are available around the world.
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The Best Car Engine: Jaguar XK Straight Six
This is the engine that made Jaguar. Before the introduction of the world-beating XK 6 engine, the British marque was a middling also-ran. The generously sized engine was the brainchild of Sir William Lyons and William Heynes, who came up with the idea for the engine while sitting on a roof as part of a fire watch while German bombs fell on Coventry.
The engine propelled Jaguar to no less than five Le Mans victories between 1951 and 1957. It also powered Jaguar’smost famous sports car of all, the flowing E-Type. Considering the engine had its roots in WWII, it’s amazing that it stayed in production for 43 years, until 1992.
The Best Car Engine: Chevrolet Small-Block V8
The small-block Chevrolet is the definitive American V8. Everyone knows someone who owns one. Maybe you own one yourself; I own two. That’s because since it was introduced in 1955, GM and its subsidiaries have made over 100 million small-block V8 engines. Let that number sink in for a second – one hundred million. The pushrod V8 was easy to work on, and easy to modify for more power. Modern drag racers have been able to squeeze more than2,000 horsepowerfrom GM’s design. The small-block Chevy has powered Le Mans class-winning race cars, bread vans, compacts, sedans, pickup trucks and everything in between. The small-block was eventually superseded by the LS V8, but enthusiast demand for the engine remained and you can still buy a brand-new small-block crate-motor from GM today. Is the small-block immortal? It might be.
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The Best Car Engine: Ford flathead V8
The Ford Model T revolutionized the way we drove, and the Ford flathead V8 changed how quickly we got there. The Ford “flatty” was not the first V8, or even the first mass-produced V8. But it was the first V8 that was easily affordable to the masses. Suddenly, the average family could afford a car that could go 60 mph! Model Ts couldn’t do much more than 40.
The Ford flathead is so named because the valves are seated in the block and the head is a perfectly flat “lid” that simply bolts onto the deck. The flathead configuration gives up a lot in terms of valve efficiency but makes up for it in its lack of complexity and cost. Introduced in 1932, it remained in production in the U.S. until 1953 and in German trucks until 1973.
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The Best Car Engine: Duesenberg straighteight
The Duesenberg J cannot be anything but the greatest American classic car ever made. These regal, two-tonne locomotives of chrome and lacquer paint were the pinnacle of the automotive world when new. Tragically built on the cusp of the Great Depression, the marque found itself trying hard to sell these $15,000 cars at a time when a physician made about $3,000 annually.
The 6.9L engine was made in three versions between 1928 and 1937. The naturally aspirated version made an impressive 265 horsepower. But Duesenberg also made 36 supercharged cars, and those made 320 hp each; top speed of the supercharged ones were over 200 km/h. The ultimate version of the car was the SSJ, of which just two were made: one for GaryCooper, and another for Clark Gable. These cars had supercharged engines that made nearly 400 hp.
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The Best Car Engine: Ferrari “Colombo” V12
You might have never heard one in person, but you know the sound already. A mechanical howl with the valves punctuating little staccatos on each cylinder firing– it’s the shriek of an old Ferrari V12. And remarkably, almost all the Ferrari 60-degree V12s from 1947 to 1988 can trace their lineage back to one man:Gioacchino Colombo. His design was originally intended for F1 use and displaced a tiny 1.5 litres. The pistons were barelytwo inches in diameter! It grew in many iterations to an ultimate size of 4.9L in the Ferrari 412, but it gained fame in the 250 GTO, 365 GTB/4 and many other lovely models.
The Best Car Engine: MoPar Street Hemi
The Hemi name is derived from its hemispherical combustion chambers. Chrysler chose this design because it allowed fitting larger valves than normal while still adhering to NASCAR’s two-valve-per-cylinder mandate. These widely splayed valves created equally wide valve covers which emphasized the overall girth of the engine. The Hemi was MoPar’s largest, most expensive, most hardcore and most powerful engine of the era. Its daunting physical size led others to call it “the elephant motor.”
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The Hemi lived in production cars for just five short years between 1966 and 1971. You could special-order the engine if you knew the right people in 1965, but that really didn’t count. In the end, emissions regulations and unleaded gas conspired to kill off the Hemi, and it never returned in dual-quad form.
The Best Car Engine: Cummins 6BT
The Cummins 6BT was launched in 1984 but didn’t see the engine bay of a road-legal vehicle until 1989. That’s because the burly 6BT was originally designed for farm implements and construction equipment, with zero thought towards passenger vehicle refinement. Dodge decided that the 6BT would be the perfect engine to offer in its three-quarterand one-tonne trucks starting in 1989. The 6BT displaces 5.9L and weighs 500 kg fully assembled. Boosted by a Holset turbocharger, output ranged between 160 and 210 horsepower depending on the variant of engine; torque was between 400 and 440lb.-ft.Created to do the hardest work an engine can handle, 6BT’s were designed to last 560,000 km with only basic maintenance, and a few last even longer than that.
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The Best Car Engine: Honda B-Series
The Honda B series is essentially the engine that started the craze with modifying Hondas. With two little syllables, Honda changed the way enthusiasts saw the brand: VTEC. The B series wasn’t the first or the last DOHC I4 from the company but it was the one that popularized it in the enthusiast world. High-output versions of the Honda B could be found in the Integra and Civic Type R and the engine was the first production unit to eclipse 100 hp per litre.
The B-Series was installed in the Civic, Del Sol, Integra and other Honda offerings. It quickly earned a reputation for impressive fuel economy, easy maintenance, and solid longevity. It also tingled the brains of anyone who revved one of these motors out past 8,000 rpm. Nothing quite sounds like a Honda B at full tilt.
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The Best Car Engine: Chrysler Slant Six 1959 1987
The leaning tower of power! Chrysler’s slant six was canted 30-degrees to one side to afford stylists a lower hoodline. This allowed the cars to have rakish snouts but left the six looking rather odd underhood. Nonetheless, the thrifty pushrod six soon gained a following. The slant makes a distinct sound at idle because it had a solid-liftercamshaft until 1983; about 20 years after most had abandoned the technology.
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Clayton Seams
CURRENTLY
Online Editor & Video Manager, Driving.ca
EDUCATION
Southern Alberta Institute of Technology
SUMMARY
· Lifelong car enthusiast with a particular affinity for classics · 10+ years automotive writing experience · 10+ years professional video experience
EXPERIENCE
Clayton Seams has worked in automotive media for over 10 years. Starting with his own website, TheLifeMechanical, his byline has appeared in Speedhunters, Petrolicious, and Curbside Classic before starting with Driving.ca in 2014 as a staff editor. Clayton has a strong background in video and has worked on many projects for Driving including their groundbreaking wind tunnel test of a 1934 Chrysler Airflow.
He has written and shot more than 400 car reviews for Driving on everything from hatchbacks to supercars. He has personally owned a plethora of classic cars and enjoys taking them on adventures. He is also a dedicated lighthouse nut and often finds a way to work lighthouses into his reviews and photography.
EDUCATION
Clayton obtained a Certificate of Photojournalism from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology.
CONTACT INFO
Email: cseams@postmedia.com
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clayton-seams/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CLAYTRON9000
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