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A Look at question of the Week: What’s Your All-Time Favorite Engine with Nine or More Cylinders?—WINNER’S UPDATE

WINNER’S ANNOUNCEMENT:

Happy Monday! We’re back to announce the winner for our Question of the Week, where our victor will accept a $25 credit for a hat or T-shirt from the BaT Gear Store and the acclaim of their peers.

Our question was: What’s your all-time favorite engine with nine or more cylinders?

The discussion thread was certainly a diverse omnium gatherum of high-cylinder-count engines used in vehicles across land, air, and sea. This week, the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine was the most mentioned nomination, and BaT member @Lagunatich was the first to mention it, thereby making him the winner!

Some 50 versions of the Merlin were produced throughout its lifespan, including the Packard V-1650 (which was built in-house at Packard), and they powered some iconic pieces of WWII aircraft—the P-51 Mustang, the Supermarine Spitfire, Hawker Hurricane, and more. And it’s definitely worthy of being this week’s winning nomination. Congratulations, Lagunatich! Be sure to check your email to claim the prize. 

Now, let’s put on some headphones for a few of these and take a look at some other popular nominations from this week’s discussion thread:

This nomination certainly topped the charts for the week; Simon Whitelock built this one-off for a Guinness World Record for vehicle engine with the most cylinders and dubbed it the Tinker Toy. Simon provided an overview of it in this video, and we’ve queued it up to a ride-away clip.

Oh, yes we have! 

We sold one at the top of the year for charity and even featured it in that week’s edition of the Weekly Weird & Wonderful

To continue its dominance, Porsche slapped the 5.4L flat-12 with a turbocharger following unfavorable results from experimenting with a 16-cylinder monster; final figures clocked in at over 1,000 horsepower—up from the 580-horsepower rated 4.5L version.

It was essentially two flat-eights stacked on top of each other, hence the H-shape. 

@Vintage.Autobahn, who had the pleasure of hearing this particular mill, nominated the Duesenberg W-24:

Hands down and nearly undebatable to me, having heard it run and taken the time to examine the dizzyingly complex gear-driven timing mechanism, it’s the Duessenberg W-24. Two of these engines were commissioned by Horace Elgin Dodge Jr (yea, that Dodge) in 1925, reportedly at a cost of $32,500 ($600,000 in 2025).

The Duesenberg was recently rebuilt for installation in the hand-built recreation of the Notre Dame II. Great photos and history abound on these motors and the boats they were installed in over the last 100 years. Use the Google to look it up, I promise you will not be disappointed. Power numbers were rather modest to begin with, so development for racing required the addition of a supercharger, taking HP over 1000 by 1935…. for a purpose-built hydroplane…. Amazing engineering in an era before CNC and robots.

Horace Elgin Dodge Jr. (of the Dodge family) aimed to “beat anything afloat.” Dennis Simanaitis (former Engineering Editor at Road & Track) put together a piece on his website with information gleaned from an R&T 1992 article and a tech piece from 2013—it’s worth the read!

Gioacchino Colombo certainly built a masterpiece of an engine, which came in a variety of road-going and racing Ferraris between 1947 and 1988.

The “Twin Six” is truly a rare gem of GM lore from the ’60s. 

We wish we could feature them all, but in the interest of time, we’ll stop right here! Thanks to everyone who participated, and congratulations once again to our winner, Lagunatich! We’ll be back with a new question soon.

ORIGINAL POST:

Welcome to the BaT Question of the Week! For those unfamiliar, here are the rules: we ask an automotive or transportation-themed question, and the author of our favorite answer from the comments is awarded a $25 credit to the BaT Gear Store.

We asked you about your favorite four-, six-, and eight-cylinder engines back in 2019, and this week we’re venturing into the higher end of the piston count game by asking:

What’s your all-time favorite engine with nine or more cylinders?

There’s something special about the complexity of motors with higher cylinder counts. Today, we’re starting the count at nine to allow radial engines into the pool—uniquely-configured powerplants just add to the fun.

As an example, let’s look at the Marmon V16 developed during the late 1920s; it was an 8.0-liter beast producing 200 horsepower, and capable of besting the contemporary Duesenberg Model J.

With that, we pass it over to you!

What’s your all-time favorite engine with nine or more cylinders?

Nominate your favorites in the comments, and give a thumbs-up to any other nominations you deem worthy. We’ll announce the winner on Monday.

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