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Sweet sixteens
Rare and historically unsuccessful, 16-cylinder engines still have mystique
By Bob English
Thursday, February 12, 2004
"Sweet" is the word currently being used to describe things once referred to as "neat," but I'll bet it was originally used by some delighted automotive engineer when the first 16-cylinder engine was fired up and sat in its test bed spinning like a big dynamo.
Sixteen-cylinder engines have never been common, invariably used only in luxurious or high-performance machines, and have thus developed a certain mystique in the cylinder-count world of automotive one-upmanship.
When it comes to engines, size matters more than most people realize. But in automotive circles, it's the number of cylinders that impresses most. In the great Canadian automotive consciousness - formed over the years from unequal parts of fact and mythology - 4-cylinders were for econo-cars and as for 5-cylinders, well, we won't even go there. Sixes, until fairly recently when V6s became the standard, were just a step up the desirability scale from fours.
V8s were the engines of choice for anybody who took their vehicular status seriously. Engines with more than eight pots have always been rarities.
Twelve-cylinder units have been built in limited numbers over the years, although only a handful of V12s and one W12 are available today. But 16-cylinder engines haven't been seen in production road cars since the 1930s. They might be poised for a comeback, although there's only one you can actually buy today. Bugatti employed V16s in its heyday, and now that famous name (owned these days by Volkswagen) is due to reappear affixed to a supercar called the EB16.4 Veyron, powered by a unique W16 engine. This engine displaces 8.0-litres and is comprised of two 8-cylinder engine blocks set at 90 degrees. It produces almost 1,000 horsepower and a similar amount of torque, and gives the car a theoretical top speed of over 400 km/h. Only penny-packet numbers of these cars, which are being hand-assembled at the old Bugatti chateau in Molsheim, in the Alsace region of France, will be built. The first of these million-dollar-plus machines should be in owners hands this spring.
Cadillac, which sold V16 cars up into the 1930s, could perhaps be next.
One of the more sensational cars at the Canadian International AutoShow in Toronto will be Cadillac's Sixteen concept. Hopefully show-goers will be able to get a look at its engine, a massive hunk of machined metal with a displacement of 13.6-litres, producing 1,000 hp and 1,000 lb-ft of torque. Cadillac sees it as a tribute to the auto industry's first V16 engine, which it says was launched by the company more than 70 years ago.
Cadillac's first V16 appeared in 1930, and apart from the number of cylinders was a fairly conventional example of current engine design. It displaced 452 cubic inches (7.4-litres) and produced just 165 horsepower, but likely about 320 lb-ft of torque at just 1,500 rpm. A 3-speed manual gearbox delivered power to the rear wheels of no less than 14 models, all of which were built on a grand scale. The engine produced stately progress, rather than the high performance 16-cylinders would suggest, and top speeds in the 135 km/h range.
North American 16-cylinder rivals were the Marmon and Peerless, while in Europe the Bucciali brothers were building their "Double Huit."
Early designers of 16-cylinder engines, both automotive and aeronautical, were looking for different things. Those building luxury cars were after smoothness of operation, along with power and prestige. Auto-racing types were looking for power, pure and simple. The aeronautical community was also looking for power, but also the compactness some 16-cylinder designs offered. One of the early aero engines was the Rolls-Royce H-16 Eagle, but there were a number of others, including a U-16 developed by Ettore Bugatti during the First World War.
Bugatti's aero-engine wasn't much of a success, but in 1928 he took two 8-cylinder car engines, joined them at the hip, as it were, and created a V16 to power a team of Grand Prix racers. For various reasons they never raced.
But plenty of others used 16-cylinder engines for racing, mainly because their larger piston area for a given displacement promised more power.
Maserati grafted two of its successful straight-8s onto a common crankcase in the late 1920s to create a V16 that ran in various forms, and without great success, up to 1934. Auto-Union took a more scientific and successful approach and designed its V16 from the crankcase up. By 1937 it developed 520 hp from 6.0-litres. Alfa-Romeo also developed V16s to challenge the Germans, but the automaker couldn't match their output.
A unique 16-cylinder design from the mid-1930s was the Trossi-Monaco, which was created to be a world beater by a pair of visionary, not to mention enthusiastic, Italians. Their front-drive car was powered by a 4.0-litre, 16-cylinder, air-cooled radial engine mounted in the nose and producing 250 hp. It was never raced.
There were early 16-cylinder racers on this side of the Atlantic as well. Leo Goossen-designed Miller V16s powered Indianapolis 500 racers, and Leon Duray created a unique, two-stroke Indy racing engine with eight U-shaped pairs of cylinders castings. In the post Second World War years, perhaps the most famous 16-cylinder racing effort was undertaken by Britain's BRM, which began with supercharged, 1.5-litre Formula 1 engines of wild complexity and a propensity to act like hand grenades. By the '60s BRM had switched to an H-16 design, but the struggles and the failures continued.
It has a fascinating history, but the 16-cylinder engine, despite its promise, doesn't seem to have been a very successful notion, does it?
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