W16 engine
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A W16 engine is a sixteen cylinder piston engine in a W configuration. All W16 engines consist of four banks of four cylinders (two juxtaposed V8 engine blocks), coupled to a single crankshaft.
Volkswagen Group currently produces W16s. Volkswagen's design is a stretched form of its W12 engine, which is itself based on technology from the VR6. The engine was introduced with the Bentley Hunaudieres concept car, a mid-engined supercar which was never intended for production (Bentley being a VW holding as of 1999).
The VR6 is a very short inline six designed to fit in the confined engine bay of a front wheel drive car. It is very short for an inline 6 because the cylinders are staggered, even cylinders moved forward, odd cylinders moved backward to reduce the length. Joining two such designs together into a W engine creates a design that is much shorter than a V with the same number of cylinders, but not too much wider. Volkswagen's W12 engines utilize two VR6-like sets of cylinders mated at 72 degrees, and the W8 consisted of two VR4s at the 72 degree angle. In the W16 each side is made up of eight cylinders, but the 'bank' angle is increased to 90 degrees. The W16 can be thought of as two banks of two sets of VR4s joined end to end.
Note that this design differs from the W18 engine that Volkswagen produced for its Bugatti concept cars of 1998 and 1999. The narrow angle of each set of cylinders allows just two camshafts to drive each pair of banks, so just four are needed in total. For this reason, the engine is sometimes described as a WR16. Bugatti has also added four turbochargers to the W16 engine, allowing the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 to create 1001 bhp. The car tops its predecessor, the Koenigsegg CCR, as the world's fastest supercar.
The VW W16 is used in the Bugatti Veyron 16.4, which entered production in 2005. 300 examples are expected to be produced. It is also reportedly being considered for use in other VW Group products, albeit probably without turbocharging.
| Piston engine configurations | |
|---|---|
| Straight | Single, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14 |
| V | 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 16, 20, 24 |
| Flat | 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 16 |
| W | 8, 9, 12, 16, 18 |
| Other inline | H, VR, Opposed, U (Square), X |
| Other | Radial, Rotary, Pistonless (Wankel) |
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