Usually for Glorious Garbage, I’m highlighting some embarrassing and yet fascinating car, something that encompasses both the glory and the garbage of the automotive world. This is one of the most majestic classifications anything in the automotive world can hope for, and deciding what makes it in or not is a job I take very seriously. Somberly, even. This time, though, it’s not a whole car we’ll be talking about, just the heart of one. The engine. Specifically the Jaguar AJ126 V6 engine.
This engine has had some pretty flashy homes, from the Jaguar F-Type to the Jaguars XJ, XE, XF, and F-Pace and the Land Rover Discovery and some Range Rovers, like the Range Rover Sport HSE. These engines were almost always offered in cars that also could be had with the bigger 5-liter V8, and there’s a reason for that, and that reason is what makes the AJ126 V6 such an amazing Glorious Garbage candidate: it used the same block as the V8.
I don’t mean a cut-down block like so many other V6 engines that were derived from V8s, like the Chevy 90° V6 engine, derived from the Chevy V8 small block, but with the numbers three and six cylinders removed. As in removed removed, with the block physically reduced in size.
Jaguar, though, didn’t bother to actually remove the unneeded cylinders, and instead just got rid of the pistons inside them, blanked off the holes, modified the crankshaft, made smaller, 3-cylinder-per-side heads, and then probably knocked off early to the pub. The result was a V6 engine that, seemingly by magic, takes up exactly as much room as a V8!
Here, have a look:
And it’s heavy, too! But not just normal engine-heavy: needlessly heavy, thanks to that big-ass chunk of metal hanging off the back of the engine, doing precisely, as the British say, fuck-all.
Because the block is the same size as the V8, the crankshaft has to be the same length, meaning that on that last un-needed journal is a balancing weight instead. The crankshaft also has split pins so each connecting rod can be separated, letting the spark plug firing happen at 120° of rotation. Remember, this block was designed for a 90° V8, and not the ideal 60° that’s preferred for a V6, so, you know, they had to get clever.
The bore is reduced on the V6 to 84.5 mm from the V8’s 92.5 mm, giving a displacement of just about 3 liters, compared to the V8’s five. The V6, with its supercharger nestled in the generous valley of that 90° vee, makes a respectable 380 horsepower.
Now, what I love about this engine is that it seems to be a near-universal source of bafflement to people, who are genuinely conflicted about how to feel about it. I am quite late to this party, and by no means the only one to find these compromises confusing. Videos have been made about it!
At first glance, it just seems lazy. They just blanked off the end two cylinders? Why would they do that? What possible advantages would you get in the car? None, right? More dead weight, more space taken up for no reason, compromises made for how the engine actually runs – what’s the advantage here?
And then you start thinking about money, because this is a British carmaker, after all, and they have a long and beautiful history of pound-pinching, and you realize that a same-size block means the same engine mount points, and that means you don’t have to re-crash test the V6 version of the car, and then things start to make a lot more sense.
I’ve even driven a car with this engine before, and driven it pretty hard, on a track, back in 2014 when I attended the F-Type’s launch event. That event let me drive, back-to-back, the V8 and V6 versions of the car, and at the time I was unaware of the peculiarity of the V6, which, I should note, was so disguised under plastic engine covers you couldn’t see the oddly short heads or anything like that, and during those drives I found I preferred the handling of the V6, due to the less weight up front. Now I know there could have been even less weight there! But you know what? I bet it wasn’t that much extra weight, probably 50 pounds or so.
But, significantly, I didn’t really notice anything negative – I liked the V6! It’s not a bad engine by any means, at least not in the context that Jaguar used it. If you were, say, to use it in a car that had no V8 option, it would get significantly stupider, because all the reasons that make this engine make sense would disappear pretty quickly, leaving you with an engine that was heavier than it needed to be, more complicated than it needed to be, and used more materials than it needed to.
Part of me just loves the eh-fuck-it engineering that went into this engine; don’t need the extra two cylinders? Just board them up! It’s like putting drywall over a bathroom door because you haven’t cleaned it in two years and it’s just not worth bothering now. It’s both half-assed and yet also pretty clever, given the circumstances. In short, it’s glorious garbage, I think in the best possible sense of the phrase.
I think it’s been mentioned before, but at least for the European market it makes sense to offer a smaller displacement engine. There’s the thing about taxes being based on displacement. Then there’s high gas prices. The V6 most likely was advertised with a lower fuel consumption, which is a good selling point on the dealer floor. There could also be something about meeting a certain fleet consumption, which makes it necessary to offer a more fuel efficient model. Although it’s safe to assume that real-life fuel consumption wasn’t much different from the V8. Then there’s the cultural aspect (not sure how to name that, but you’ll get it). If you were to purchase it as a company car (upper management level?) for example and your boss is driving the V8, you may be required to limit yourself to the V6. Then there’s the matter of envy and understatement. Towards your neighbors you can always argue that it’s only got the V6. There are places where people think like that. I grew up amongst swabians, believe me.
“Then there’s the cultural aspect (not sure how to name that, but you’ll get it). If you were to purchase it as a company car (upper management level?) for example and your boss is driving the V8, you may be required to limit yourself to the V6. Then there’s the matter of envy and understatement. Towards your neighbors you can always argue that it’s only got the V6. There are places where people think like that. I grew up amongst swabians, believe me.”
Ugh. Crap like that make me want to become a hermit.
Wasn’t this one of the arguments of the VW Phaeton?
“But it’s not an Audi”
Wasn’t this one of the arguments of the VW Phaeton?
“But it’s not an Audi”
Nor a Bentley.
Should have made it as a V12 from the start, then they’d have the basis for a whole range of engines … V12, V10, V8 and V6.. just blank of the unnecessary cylinders.
You forgot the other obvious configuration: inline 6 😉
You could use the other bank as a row of cup holders.
From a small manufacturer perspective it’s pure genius. From a sports car manufacturer, it’s pure shit. Therein lies the conundrum.
The 3.0 sizing was absolutely about taxes in those many countries that tax by the liter so anything under exactly 3 was in the 2 liter bracket. Otherwise the obvious 3.75 size would have been even less expensive to build and probably perform quite well.
“not the ideal 60° that’s preferred for a V6”
Some Germans would say that the preferred bank angle on a V6 is 0 degrees.
Or 180 degrees.
Or 15.
(and 10.6)
That’s almost as dumb as building an aluminum V8, then adapting it to iron, then sawing off two cylinders, then selling the v6 to someone else, then buying it back from another someone else and reinstalling the tooling in the exact same spots in the exact same factory, then adding a split pin crank, then turning it 90 degrees, adding fuel injection and balance shafts, and then continuing to produce it until forced by emmision regs to stop, and then replacing it with a really shitty DOHC v6.
Oh, wait.
The crazy thing is it evolved into one of that manufacturer’s best engines.
Wait, what engine is this? I’m not familiar with it, but I’m interested now!
Buick V6/231/3800
Thanks!
Also sold the V8 to someone else who turned it into a legend of unreliability.
Yeah didn’t they put Lucas parts on it?
Genius!
They did but that didn’t explain its appetite for head gaskets.
This is made up, right?
Right?
Why didn’t they be even lazier, just remove the bore and sell a smaller 4l V8?
Have you ever heard of the Jaguar S-Type?
Wow, is the four cylinder engine just half an eight? A V4?! So many possibilities.
It seems an awful lot like a Solution in search of a Problem.
Ostensibly, this was created to skip some displacement-based taxes that the previous N/A 5.0 V8 would have been subject to. But I have to wonder – how many of these engines were actually sold in displacement tax countries? I have to imagine that most of those would have been split by those wanting to be frugal with a diesel, or devil-may-care with the supercharged V8. Which leaves the 3.0 to countries like the US, where the 3.0 has no notable benefit over the N/A 5.0. I’ve driven both extensively, the S/C V6 is a fine powerplant, but the 5.0 V8 is just better, in the way that V8s almost always are.
I really do think this engine is a screwup. ‘Garbage’ is perhaps too harsh, but, I think there were better options on the table. A de-bored 4.0 V8 would likely have been ‘good enough’ for the few tax country sales where engine size would have mattered, and it would have let the rest of us keep the wonderful 5.0 V8.
Also, about the extra weight, in something like a Land Rover, really not a big deal. However, in the Jaguars, which went way out of their way to be lightweight, and some of which handled quite decently, that extra-what, are we guesstimating 50 pounds?-hung way out close to the car, it’s just blasphemy.
The F-Type, despite all its aluminium is not a light car.
The XJ is though! And, I believe the 2nd gen XF? Light for what they are, at any rate. But yes, sadly the F-Type is quite porky.
Perhaps you can shed some light on my hypothesis – in the UK at least, did anyone actually buy the S/C 3.0?
Both the supercharged and non-supercharged V6 sold quite well initially. The F-Type’s problem was it was oddly positioned, and JLR kept buggering about with engines and trim levels (and did lots of half-assed special editions) so it ended up with a confused identity.
Looking outside of the F-Type though, to the general JLR market. Maybe a few XJ buyers went for it? Can’t imagine this V6 ended up in many Land Rovers. Also, there was an N/A version of this thing? We only ever got the V6 in the US with a Supercharger on it.
I think the V6 was in the last pre X351 XJ – what was that X308? Yes, in the UK initial versions of the F-Type were V6, V6 supercharged and V8 I think. V6 had central exhausts, V8 had them at the outer edges is the way to tell.
One word – China.
They don’t like diesel engines and the tax breaks for displacement are fierce. A 2.5 – 3.0L engine will get a 12% tax, a 3.0L – 4.0L will get 25%, and over 4.0L is 40%. Coupled with the new car import tax it makes a huge difference.
Also, a lot of countries in Europe also base tax on CO2 emitted & the 3.0L would have several classes lower than a V8.
“A 2.5 – 3.0L engine will get a 12% tax, a 3.0L – 4.0L will get 25%, and over 4.0L is 40%”
How about zero liters? Are EVs tax free?
Better than that – in many of the big cities they also get a license plate without going through the lottery which is expensive and only about 10% of applicants are actually successful.
Changli FTW!!
EVs are tax free in the UK (and probably Europe too). These days, UK tax bands are based on emissions, not displacement, although that still might prompt JLR to offer a smaller engine.
I assume the electricity has it own sin tax
Nah, just VAT at 5%.
Petrol duty on the other hand is 52.05p per litre, on top of the base price, plus 20% VAT on top of that. We’re currently paying the equivalent of $5.79/gallon.
That’s what we were paying here in NorCal not so long ago. I filled up at $3.73 yesterday (the cheapest in town) so its come down a lot.
Electricity here OTOH is #@^$ expensive!:
https://www.pge.com/en/account/rate-plans/find-your-best-rate-plan/electric-vehicles.html#ev2adetails
So here for now the price advantage of an EV is VERY questionable. Someone driving a 42 MPG PHEV like a Gen2 Volt will pay the equivalent of $4.45/gallon to charge overnight at home. If they were to charge during peak hours they’re paying the equivalent of $8.59/gallon! A new Prius makes that gas math even more favorable.
I still question the actual impact of it. Is your average Range Rover buyer concerned with the taxes, or are they skirting them either way? I have to imagine near-as-makes-no-difference ‘all’ of the Jaguar products were sold with the 2.0T, with the occasional enthusiast V8 purchase. I guess, if they just could not economically source a 6-cylinder from somewhere else (just turbo the Volvo Si6?), the 3.0 S/C had a place. But I will always think it was the wrong choice for the US, the Middle East, and any other markets unconcerned with displacement.
They can’t skirt those taxes. They’re import tax so added on to the sticker of the car and can’t be refunded. And yes, they did have a big impact.
There was a Range Rover Sport with a 2.0T but that was the only large Range Rover that was sold with it so they needed a cheaper version. Plus there is the coroporate average fuel consumption target to hit which the V6 would have helped towards a lot.
JLR used the 3.2 N/A Si6 in the Freelander for a while and Volvo had the 3.0 Turbo version so it was an engine known to them. But it didn’t fit in the engine bay plus the other installations were transverse so would have need new block / crankcase castings for a longditudinal installation.
Those markets are concerned with displacement in that they all have fuel economy targets. Downsizing (and down-cylindering) make a big difference over the drive cycle.
This doesn’t seem like a mocked up then off to the pub solution. This looks like a few too many at the pub during lunch and then mocked it up solution.
My biggest Q is:
Could we, theoretically, make it a v8?
Outstanding question. It looks like quite a bit of deck is missing from the modified casting, so short of some seriously redneck amounts of welding to build it back up, you’re not gonna be able to just drill and bore the last two cylinders out.
I think you mean Indian – have you seen the videos of a small team in a dirt floor shack rebuilding big, cracked diesel engine heads. It looks too primitive to be real, but the steps they use make sense. Google “Caterpillar Cracked Head Repair Video” Play it at 1.25 or 1.5 normal speed so you don’t lose a full half hour from your day.
Indian, Pakistani, whatever. Any fairly third world country. What is more surprising to me is when they have apparently some pretty industrial setups and series production, like when they’re forging chain links into Isuzu truck axle shafts or whatever. I wonder how long their sketchy rewelded cranks and differentials and stuff actually last.
Half of my family is Punjabi, but take this with a grain of salt:
Things aren’t fixed to last, but to work. Find a person who’s fixed enough and the fix will last.
I’m sure our middle eastern brethren would say “this is a v8 for those who know how to dream”
In a 5x speed, 20 min video.
I’d bet they’d find a v8 head that fits too.
This would be the only valid closure to the article.
It’s really a tragedy that the F-Type is going away before getting the inline-6 from current Land Rovers. A performance version of that engine would have been a fitting tribute to Jaguar’s heritage!
You’ve finally got your Jaaaag, and you’re feeling pretty clever. You saved a bit of coin by opting for the V6, and it feels every bit as sumptuous inside as its V8 brethren. There aren’t even any of those stupid blanks in the dash to remind you of options you didn’t specify. But you’re a gearhead, so one day you pull the plastic engine cover and there they are. Mocking you. You didn’t think you’d escape humiliation, did you?
LOL even GM isn’t THAT lazy 😀
So would their new V12 take up the space of a V16? 😛
This is my take too. Even GM at least half-assed their cheapskate V6. And you have to think, all that extra aluminum needlessly being put into every car, that stuff isn’t free!
That looks like it’s a different block casting from the normal V8, meaning there isn’t even the argument that they only had to develop one block. Plus the separate development of the different heads and cams, and the unique split pin crank with balance shaft.
I didn’t know that this was a supercharged v6. That makes it even stupider.
Why does a manufacturer offer larger and smaller engine options in the same car anyways? It’s because the bigger engine costs more, and now they have higher and lower price versions of the car and can appeal to a larger range of buyers. For example, rental companies who would never buy a 5.0 Mustang buy v6 and Ecoboost mustangs in droves. There is also the tangential benefit of the smaller engines weighing less and often getting better fuel economy.
But I’m not buying that a V8 with two bores plugged costs significantly less to manufacture than a normal V8, especially when you consider the considerable cost of a supercharger. I bet the supercharged redneck v6 is every bit as expensive, heavy, and thirsty as the V8 from whence it came. Making the whole exercise entirely pointless. I think they just made an engine worse.
It’s largely the same casting, just with a few different cores swapped in for the last two cylinders. Still easily runs down the same production lines, has similar enough dimensions, weight, grabbing and locating features, uses the same casting, machining, inspection and assembly stations in the same order, and only requires differences in the machine programming to switch between making a 6 or an 8. For a small manufacturer like JLR that is never going to be in the position of running even a second shift making these engines individually, saving a ton of money on tooling and manufacturing machines upfront by using the same line for both would greatly reduce cost, much moreso than any savings in crash testing
Did this even save any money in manufacturing vs the V8? Because you know they charged more for the 8
Oh, a ton. They only had to buy one production line for both engines, or likely could reuse large portions of an existing line with just programming changes for the different cylinder counts, saving a ton on plant fixed costs
I mean was the per unit cost cheaper for the six vs the 8, because it doesn’t seem like it saved much in parts, materials, and assembly operations
Exactly. I’m pretty sure a supercharger costs more than two pistons and connecting rods.
The underlying price is based on the cost of the V6 (was there a normally aspirated version, either here or in other markets?), which means the additional margin for the V8 is pretty much all profit.
You’re saying, as others have, that the v6 and V8 do not have significantly different manufacturing costs but it doesn’t matter because Jag can charge different amounts.
Apparently so.
Not even the point. Price discrimination is all about charging different *prices*. The fact that they cost the same to produce is irrelevant if you can sell at both price points.
Like Jeep selling the same fuel tank with different capacities.
Sir William Lyons’ entire ethos for Jaguar was to offer surprising value for money, which included things like a 6 at the price of a 4 or a 12 for the price of an 8 vs competitors, and not padding margins more than strictly necessary. Just making the V8 standard across the board would have been more in keeping with Jaguar brand values
Don’t forget they also saved on not having to create a bespoke V6, or buy one from outside. Just the development alone must have saved a bunch.
The British are notorious for hanging on to their dead weight like, say, Northern Ireland or the monarchy.
You can get in to troubles for having that opinion in Northern Ireland.
Well hell man! I was unaware of this. Bit of a wasted opportunity to have an incorporated compressor/charged intake maybe?
True genius often stems from unbridled laziness.
I disagree. It’s not even firing on all cylinders.
Laziness and efficiency are often the exact some thing done for different motives.
Gonna try this line with my boss at my upcoming review.
This is the right kind of shortcut for an under performing company like Jag. Hell, most people only even know about this because it looks so doofy, not because there is perceptibly differnt about the oddball engine when behind the wheel. Engineering is all about working under constraints and limited resources. Jag was able to creatively cut costs without any real downsides that would be noticeable to the end user. Besides being a tiny bit heavier and longer than a “normal” V6, there really isn’t a big downside in the smallish volumes JLR operate in. Sure, at some point this probably actually costs more as the savings on NRE and managing fewer part numbers is probably outweighed by additional material costs (larger crank, block, heads, etc than a normal V6 and therefore more expensive) at some larger volume; but JLR clearly wasn’t close to those levels.
I think the crash test savings were important too
“creatively cut costs” It is highly questionable that -2 pistons, -2 connecting rods, +1 supercharger saves any money at all, and that’s ignoring the development cost of the unique heads and crank.
Developing the supercharged V6 from scratch or cutting the block would have been quite bit more expensive. And required all new bits you mentioned + more. And one could say that benefits of that (marginally less heavy) wouldn’t have justified it. Especially with crash testing several models that use them, that aren’t volume sellers anyho.
And what I’ve heard it’s not bad unit.
What kinda baffles me, is that how this is news to anyone? I mean every single review of Jags or RR mentioned this when they came out.
I am very confident that this is cheaper than developing an all new v6. But I don’t think this was any cheaper than just putting the V8 in every car.
They needed to offer something at lower pricepoint for all markets. Lowering the price of V8 would have cut into their earnings much more. And they needed smaller displacement engine. Also injectors, pistons, valves, wiring, potential savings on engine management, cooling, etc all cost money.
So these things often have quite many sides. I’m personally SW engineer and worked close to HW for 20+ years. Saving few pennies (especially products manufacturers in millions) here and there save huge amount of money, even if the efforts getting there might seem weird and illogical at glance.
In all honesty if Japan had done this sort of thing, made it work well and durable, then we’d all be calling it a GENIUS move.
Culture is a strange thing sometimes.
I just don’t get the why. Is this so there was a “base” engine and they could upsell the V8?
Because in Europe gas is expensive, and not everyone needs or wants a V8 when the V6 was plenty fast.
And many countries especially in EU have co2 based tax in car price and yearly taxation. Can add up to tens to thousands of euros quite fast.
oh this easy because the car is British it’s brilliant, if it were an american car it would be lazy.
Because Americans (GM especially) would do something lazy like leave the pistons in close so the engines would lock up on cylinders not even being use bc they deleted the oil squirter.
What boggles me is how their v6 sounds so good, and yet the gm and ford 90° v6s sound like buzzsaws when wound up.
I vote for clever cost cutting even if it sounds and looks lazier than a university student skipping class to binge netflix and noodles
That’s an oddly-specific simile. 🙂
Shut the Door!
My mind is a blank.
Tata for now!