Pop the hood on your car and there's a decent chance one of these is lurking down there.
10.) Ford Duratec V6
The predecessor to the Ecoboost appeared in almost all of Ford's brands including Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, Mazda, Jaguar, and Aston Martin. Aston's V12 is more or less just two Duratec V6s stuck together and warmed over by Cosworth. That's still used today.
Oh, and the Ecoboost V6 is derived from the Duratec as well.
Suggested By: MontegoMan562, Photo Credit: Aston Martin
9.) Mitsubishi Sirius
This inline-4 found its home throughout the '80s in various Misubishis, Dodges, Chryslers, and Eagles, as you'd expect. It also found itself in cars made by Hyundai and Proton, and is being used to this day in a variety of Chinese cars.
Suggested By: Manwich, Photo Credit: Mitsubishi
8.) GM Ecotec
While the Ecotec isn't as famous as the similarly-named Ecoboost, it's probably appeared in more cars. It's been used in various guises in every single GM brand (including all the dead/sold ones), Fiat, Alfa Romeo, and even the Elfin T5.
Suggested By: Little Black Coupe, Photo Credit: Cadillac
7.) Cosworth DFV
Ok, so you're not going to find this in your road car, but it was in a majority of F1 cars made from 1967-1983, as well as a slew of Formula 3000, Indy Cars, and Le Mans racers.
Seriously, everyone used this engine. Reader ljksetrightmemorialtrophydash compiled the list:
"ATS, Amon, Arrows, Bellasi, Boro, Brabham, Cooper, De Tomaso, Ensign, Fittipaldi, Ford, Hesketh, Hill, Kojima, LEC, Lola, Lotus, Lyncar, Maki, March, Matra, McGuire, McLaren, Mirage, Osella, Parnelli, Penske, Reynard, Rondeau, Shadow, Spirit, Stebro, Surtees, Theodore, Token, Trojan, Tyrrell, Williams, and Wolf."
Suggested By: ljksetrightmemorialtrophydash, Photo Credit: Norbert Apeli
6.) Ford Modular V8
As we mentioned yesterday, the 4.6 L V8 was used in pretty much any Ford that had a V8 for a while, but it was also a popular engine for low-volume sports car makers.
You'll find it in cars from Panoz, Qvale, MG, Marcos, and even early Koenigseggs.
Suggested By: autojim, Photo Credit: Ford
5.) Continental Flathead Inline 6
You've probably never heard of this engine (I hadn't), but for low volume automakers from the 20s-60s it was ubiquitous. Reader ranwhenparked compiled the whole list.
Suggested By: ranwhenparked, Photo Credit: Checker via OldCarBrochures
4.) Fiat 1.3 Multijet Diesel
You probably won't see this motor in America, but it's extremely popular everywhere else. You'll find it in Fiats, Chevrolets, Alfa Romeos, Lancias, Opels, and tons of others. Check out mike89's comment, for the staggering usage of this engine.
Suggested By: mike89, Photo Credit: Lancia
3.) PRV V6
PRV stands for Peugeot-Renault-Volvo, who developed this V6 together. It's found in their cars, as well as in cars from Alpine, Venturi, Citroen, Dodge, Eagle, Lancia, and many others, most notoriously DeLorean.
Suggested By: DennyCraneDennyCraneDennyCrane, Photo Credit: Theyoungones1994
2.) Buick V6/V8
Raphael tells the story of this glorious motor beautifully:
"
Ok, so Buick started out with this aluminum V8 in 1960 after a couple years of development. Pontiac also used it early on.
Then Buick cut two cylinders off the thing and called it the Fireball.
In '67 Buick sold the tooling for the Fireball to Kaiser-Jeep, which called it the Dauntless.
Jeep used it for a while until AMC bought Jeep and the tooling went into storage.
Buick's chief engineer needed a new V6 after the '73 fuel crisis, remembered the old Fireball and actually dug up an old example out of a junkyard and got it running. Buick then worked out a deal to buy the tooling for the car from AMC.
Then the Dauntless/Fireball was developed into a new Buick V6, which was later developed into the undying GM 3800. In these variations, the V6 was shared with every singe north american GM division including cadillac and also Holden.
While all that was going on, a boss from Rover literally tripped over a Buick V8 while at Mercury Marine to do a deal on turbine engines, and ended up picking up the rights to that engine.
The then-Rover V8 went into just about every British carmaker of the last half century short of Aston Martin. Oh, and before that it went to Indy and also to Formula One as the Australian Repo.
The full list for the V6 is:
- Buick
- Pontiac
- Jeep
- Olds
- Chevy
- Cadillac
- Holden
The full list for the V8 (not counting Mercury Marine) is
- Buick
- Rover
- Morgan
- Brabham (using the Repco)
- Mickey Thompson (for the 1962 Harvey Aluminium Special that Gurney ran at Indy)
- Ginetta
- Land Rover
- MG
- Triumph
- TVR
- Bowler
- Leyland (their Australian arm)
- Sisu (apparently this was some kind of Finnish military offroader)
That's a grand total of 17 major carmakers, 20 if you count race car and military manufacturers, and 21 if you count marine engines as well. Not a bad run."
Suggested By: Raphael Orlove, Photo Credit: Buick via Old Car Brochures
1.) BMC A-Series
This little four-banger found its way into nearly every brand of British Leyland including, Austin, Austin-Healey, MG, Riley, Morris, Vanden Plas, Wolseley, and Rover. But since it was the engine for the Mini, the total is actually much, much higher thanks to the bevy of Mini-based cars.
Oh, and Nissan bought the license to manufacture this engine as well, bringing the total to a staggering 172 different brands!
Suggested By: me, Photo Credit: Bryn Pinzgauer
Welcome back to Answers of the Day - our daily Jalopnik feature where we take the best ten responses from the previous day's Question of the Day and shine it up to show off. It's by you and for you, the Jalopnik readers. Enjoy!
Top Photo Credit: Paul Reynolds