While The General may be King Of The Pushrod V8, those Yurpeans have cooked up some pretty good overhead-cam competition. How about a straight-from-the-factory V8 that redlines at a lunatic 8,250 RPM?
Sure, sure, we could argue the benefits of pushrods versus overhead cams all day- and feel free to do so in the comments, where it's sure to be a battle between engine swappers versus engineering geeks- but the Official Jalopnik Party Line™ holds that all V8s are good, even the Olds 350 Diesel and the Triumph Stag V8 (though we draw the line at the execrable Cadillac V8-6-4, which is sort of an edge-case V8 anyway). Having hooned a couple of Audis powered by this engine (RS4 and R8) around the Infineon track, I can state that revving the absolute piss out of an engine that boasts serious torque (over 300 foot-pounds) along with 414 (or 420 horses) and glorious V8 noise is what it's all about. Variations of the 40-valve Audi V8 engine have found homes in engine compartments all over the VW/Audi product line, in everything from the Tuareg to the C5 RS6, with horsepower ranging from the low 300s to "how much money you got?"
[Wikipedia]