What Are The Best Engines You’ve Experienced? Autopian Asks

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What makes an engine great? Horsepower might be the first thing that comes to mind – no surprise there. Certainly a great engine is a reliable one – can’t discount that. And when it’s time for maintenance, those of you who do your own wrenching surely assign additional greatness points to engines that don’t make you remove a chassis crossmember to access the oil filter. And then there’s smoothness, throttle response, and sound. And what the heck, let’s add “looking cool” to the engine-greatness checklist. It’s not a box everyone is concerned about checking, but if you like looking at engines, cooler-looking ones are better. So let’s hear it:

What are the best engines you’ve experienced?

[Editor’s Note: Torque curve and ability to handle more power are also key. I’m going to say that the AMC straight six and, surprisingly, the VM 425 diesel in my Chrysler Voyager have been the best engines I’ve experienced. (I’ve also loved the Chrysler Slant-Six “Leaning Tower of Power” and the Australian “Hemi Six,” but I haven’t driven those as far. -DT]

Autopian Answers Transp

Last time around, we asked you what car you would never buy again. The answers included Mercury Monarchs and minivans, Explorers and Eagles and Elantras, BMWs and Buicks. But the heat a few of you had for Volkswagen really jumped out, especially as you were talking about newish and relatively low-mile cars. Most notably, here are Nsane In The Membrane and staffma with their Very Woeful tales:

Vws Aa Copy

Thanks in advance for your comments, we’ll do it again tomorrow!

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197 thoughts on “What Are The Best Engines You’ve Experienced? Autopian Asks

  1. Personally, it’s the nearly tractor spec 4 cylinder naturally aspirated diesel engine that my 1976 Mercedes 240D had. Slow, incredibly loud, and pretty fuel efficient, when it wasn’t detonating oil coolers.

  2. TLDR; 13B

    I spent a decade or so on an automotive walkabout. I bought whatever car I thought seemed cool, and the thing that gets me the most excited are cool engines. I used the think V8s were the bees knees, until I discovered the beauty of a naturally balanced engine. Flat 4/6, inline 6, and the mack daddy rotary.

    Chevy’s small block still holds a special place for being so plentiful, reliable, versatile, and easy to find parts for.

    VW air cooled flat fours are very special for much of the same reasons, but with a little added flair.

    BMW inline, and Porsche flat sixes are great. The Jeep 4.0 seems to be the clear runaway favorite looking through all the responses here.

    The engine that grabbed me like no other though was the Mazda rotary. Smooth as silk, ultra-linear power delivery, the faster it turns the fast it WANTS to turn. It’s just playful like a puppy! You have to use a rotary differently than a piston engine; from idle to 2K is completely useless, and you use the revs instead of torque. If you understand the math behind how horsepower is calculated, you realize that the low torque and high hp mean that you get all of it very quickly. It’s kind of like a sport bike. When I bought my first rotary, I was actually looking at an E30 BMW. The one I was looking at was rusty though, and I knew there was an RX-7 just a mile away or so. The BMW guy had rotary experience (I had none, but was intrigued) and offered to come look at the RX-7 with me (yes, he helped sell me on the other guys’ car). I had never driven a car quite like that, and was absolutely hooked on that engine from the first time behind the wheel! Once it was warmed up, the seller told me to take it to redline (to prove that the intake was fully functional), and I couldn’t wipe the grin off my face after that. The car it was wrapped in was salt state garbage… I mean, just rusty trash. But that engine! I didn’t own it very long due to the rust, but I knew I had to get another. I recently bought an S2 RX-8 GT, and it’s very very good. Probably the most misunderstood car I’ve ever come across, but that’s another conversation. The

  3. The obvious answer is any truck/SUV LS-family that doesn’t have DFM/AFM/DOD. It was amazing to me that my old van with a 5.3 was as quick as it was at almost 300,000 miles, didn’t use any oil, got surprisingly good MPG and was maintained horribly before I got it. It even had the first iteration of VVT and I thought “surely this is gonna cause an issue or be picky about oil weight”…nope… thing was fine with 5W-20, 5W-30, 5w-40, and 10w-40. I drove it like I stole it all the time, never cared. I still can’t believe I never blew up the 4L60e that was behind it. Sold it to some guy who is still using it as a carpet van with that same engine underneath…

    The non-obvious answer is one that shocked me, and I never thought I’d say durable and a VAG product in the same sentence, but hear me out.

    The mostly unloved/inoffensive/forgettable 2.5L 5 cylinder motor that VW put in lots of Jettas/Passats. I rented a brand new Jetta with that motor and drove it from Portland airport to Spokane and was coming back down the Columbia River Gorge when all of a sudden I notice on a clear-blue day the driver behind me kept using their wipers…”that’s odd, I thought”. But whatever, didn’t care that much. Kept on cruising at over-legal highway speeds, radio blasting, enjoying the scenery when all of a sudden the car kept beeping at me occasionally. I was on a conference call at the time so I was like “WTF is that noise? Oh well, whatever, it’s a rental and it’s a VW so I don’t really care”

    Kept on driving for a while, still beeping at me intermittently so I finally decided to get off the road to stretch, get some food, and maybe investigate what was going on.

    I pulled into a gas station, turned the car off, and got out to get some food. As soon as I stepped around back to the trunk I noticed the trunk of the car was covered in what I thought was some kind of tree sap.

    …it wasn’t…

    Looked under the car and found no drain plug in the oil pan. The VW had lost almost 100% of its oil a long while before I had come in to that service station. The motor was running fine, temp gauge wasn’t overheating, no weird mechanical noises….but it sure explains why the car behind me was using their wipers like crazy! They got sprayed with all the engine oil!

    I’m sure that everything else on those VW’s would break… but those half a Lambo 2.5 motors…. damn…I was impressed. Had it towed back to PDX and they gave me a C-class for my troubles.

  4. Subaru EJ22. Subaru gets a lot of shit for bad engines but the ej22 is a unkillable monster. They should have made that the standard motor going forward. Hell even stroking it out to 2.35 would have given almost as much torque as the 2.5

  5. The Olds 455. Even through my car’s lazy transmission and axle combo, that big block torque still shoves you into the seat back.

    At one point in my multi-year journey to finally get it running right (entirely my fault it wasn’t, but just the same, it still ran every single time), I had replaced the distributor and, rookie mistake, set the timing with the vacuum advance hooked up. The result? An effective redline of 1500. Honestly didn’t matter; the engine’s powerband is all low end anyway, and thanks to the rest of the lazy drivetrain, it could still hit highway speed.

    But most importantly, 20 years of ownership, and it still puts a smile on my face.

  6. This is going to sound dumb, but I’ve been impressed by the 1MZ-FE V6 in the ’94 Camry I bought recently (a long story). I wasn’t expecting anything special, but I was pleasantly surprised. At normal driving speeds the description that comes to mind is “turbine-like” – a quiet whirr and smooth, steady pull. When you do reach for the higher RPMs it makes a nice, subtle growl. And from what I’ve read, aside from some oil sludge issues, they’re pretty reliable with no fatal flaws.

    Another great engine was the Honda J30 V6 in the ’03 Accord my family once had. My memories are dim as it’s been years since I last drove that car, but I’ll always remember how easily I could summon what felt like all the power I ever needed (and sometimes more, thanks to the accelerator’s jumpy calibration and nearly complete lack of resistance).

    Finally, the M113 in my 2000 SL500. It will always live in the shadow of the earlier M119 (at least from what I’ve read, I’ve never had the chance to drive a car with one), but it has loads of lazy torque and a fun V8 burble, is relatively simple, and is nearly bulletproof.

  7. I have a great affection for the Honda’s V6s I’ve had in my life. I had a JNA1 in my 2007 Accord Hybrid. It was quite the sleeper. The J35Z2 in my 2012 Accord is no slouch nor was the J35S1 used in my parents’ Saturn Vue. It’s usable power, not so much you easily get in trouble, revs nice and pretty reliable.

  8. My all time favorite engine is the VW 2.8L VR6. I had one in a Mk 3 and a Mk 4 Jetta. The low end torque is sublime — no downshifting to pass a bus going up a freeway onramp. And the low grumble sounded so good. Damn I miss that engine.

    1. As you can see by my avatar, I am familiar with this engine. You just can’t kill them. Mine has only 70k KM on it — barely broken in. Plus since that engine was in so many Toyotas, it’s not hard to find replacement parts.

  9. There are different ways to quantify ‘best’. In terms of pure power, the ‘best’ I’ve experienced, it’s a tie between a Hellcat Charger and an Audi S7 a friend owned. On paper, the Hellcat was faster, but for some reason, the Audi just felt faster from the passenger seat

    In terms of low operating costs, I’d say the 1.5L 4 cyl in my Honda Fit is one of the best.

    In terms of smoothest, quietest and most efficient… that would be the electric motor in the Tesla Model 3 I drove.

    In my view, there is no one engine/motor that is best at everything.

  10. My mother bought a Honda S2000 AP1 and then an AP2. The F20C with the 9000rpm redline was amazing. It sounded great and was a blast to drive. The AP2 was also good, but not as great as the AP1.

    The car was totally wasted on my mom. She just wanted a cute convertible. She shifted at 3500 rpm. I drove it with her a handful of times and revved to 9,000 rpm and I thought her head was gonna explode.

  11. the overall Best? probably the 3UR 5.7 V8 in my tundra. “weld the hood shut” reliable, makes great power. (Especially for 2008 when I bought it), sounds good, and can work all day at any temperature in North America. Great engine, but kind of soulless compared to what I have up next…

    My Favorite: The AMC 304 in my jeep. Awesome driveshaft-snapping-Dana-44-destroying power for a cj5, sounds incredible though glasspacks, has been ultra reliable for the 20 years I’ve owned it. Which has included 6-15 month periods without being started. Proof that carbs are reliable and can work well off road. Its wheeleed, pushed snow, hauled full size truck out of the mud, and entertained the kids around town. A true gem.

  12. Has to be the A Series in my 80s Austin Maestro. It was unkillable. It once broke a piston ring, that slid up past the piston and knocked a hole in the top of the piston. The piston was replaced with one out of a used A Series. Just slung it in there and sent it. That thing did another 20k miles before I sold it.

  13. A friend had a 94 Cherokee 4.0L – with the abuse that thing took, it really does live up to the hype.

    Best without a doubt is the 3.5L S38 in the 1991 BMW M5 my dad used to have in the early 2000’s. I was all about high-mileage, highly-depreciated BMWs back then, and as such had a good working relationship with a local BMW specialist. My dad was looking for a car around that time, and one of the other customers was selling her high-milage but very well maintained M5 for $12k – so he went for it.

    That car made it clear how special old M cars really were, and it was always an experience to drive it. The only real issue was a weak (slow) synchro going into second, but it wasn’t too hard to shift around it, and later the self-leveling rear shocks got really leaky. I don’t know if it was aftermarket or factory, but the clutch was absurdly heavy – whenever I got back into my 325es (or later 525i) after driving the M5, there was a moment of panic when it felt like my clutch pedal was stuck to the floor.The car was also pretty stealthy, despite being red it mostly looked like every other then-common E34 on the road.

    The engine thought – that was perfect, and definitely something special. 311hp and 266ft lbs was quite fast for the day, and it revved very quickly up to 7250 RPM. It was extremely smooth and refined under normal everyday use, very livable and surprisingly reliable, even getting decent highway MPG. The only giveaway under gentle driving was the lumpy idle. Put your foot into it though, and be prepared to hold on and shift right away. The soundtrack alone was incredibly addictive – go watch Ronin, they got it right.

  14. Have to agree with zeppelopod, ‘Best’ is really hard to nail. Having owned, repaired and driven so many different combinations over the years, there are some that are clearly better than others, but still… All that said, I gotta say the M120 in my SL 600 is like nothing else – very very smooth, linear torque, mash it and it goes, no drama. Not the fastest or most powerful but what a thrill. It’s the only V12 I’ve driven, maybe they’re all that way.

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