![\"\"](\"http:\/\/motologstudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/ETM-Web-Oct-16-VW-Piech-images_original_12352-W12engine-1-1024x806.jpg\")
<\/figure>What happens when an Austrian guy decides to build the best damn German saloon ever? Stay tuned to find out.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n W-layout engines started way before VW, by a British precision engineering company D. Napier and Sons which made W12 engines for aircraft since the 1920s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Napier Lion was a 24L behemoth producing 900 horsepower and even back in the day people were crazy enough to experiment with it and ended up shoving in a car which was called the Napier Bluebird which reached a top speed of 174mph in 1927.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Execution<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n The W12 isn’t exactly VW group’s first crack at an unconventional motor layout, after its air-cooled days, VW experimented with the possibility of making the most out of economical, front-wheel-drive compact and sub-compact platforms, and after trying everything from forced induction to experimental engine layouts, they found the answer with the VR6 engines. These engines are marginally larger than a regular Inline-4 which allows them to be placed transversely even in small cars designed for small engines like the Golf and Jetta. Even the Passat got the VR6 but the Passat was a big boy in comparison which made it the perfect testbed for their new W-format engine. A fun fact, the VR-6 Layout which everyone associates with VW these days was actually pioneered by Lancia back in 1922.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The VR-6 was also very smooth and relatively vibration-free because the narrow-angle V design combined with its classic firing order of “1 – 5 – 3 – 6 – 2 – 4”\u00a0which was the same as a regular straight-6 (one of the most balanced engine configurations ever) and this was achieved by giving the engine offset crankpins, that canceled out most vibrations. Adding to this is the fact that it has a single-cylinder head that could serve both banks of cylinders and only two cam-shafts which apart from the packaging reasons mentioned earlier, also helps in reducing the overall weight and consequently the cost of production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So as you would have guessed by now, the W12 in the Phaeton was essentially two VR6’s which resulted in a WR12 of 4-rows with 3-cylinders each, which meant that the two VR6’s joined at the crank at 72-degrees and 48-valves put in place to feed this massive powerhouse. But it didn’t end there, the cylinders were bored out from 81mm to 84mm, leading to its 6.0L displacement as opposed to the 5.8L they would have got from the standard bore of the largest VR6 of the time which was a 2.9L unit. This W12 was so significant that even after the disastrous sales figures, the W12 stayed in the VW portfolio and is found under the hood of Bentley models to date. Apart from the obvious candidates for this engine which included the Bentley Continental GT range and the Flying Spur, this powerplant made its way into the A8L, Audi’s flagship limo and a direct contender to the Phaeton, and they even managed to shove one into the Touareg, which can be best described as a Cayenne in a tuxedo, imagine having a Cayenne with a twin-turbo W12! But wait, we already got one of those, and it’s called a Bentayga. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Passat has been a reliable family runabout ever since its inception back in the early 70s. The Passat has established itself as an affordable full-sized sedan that owes its success to its practical, frugal, and functional packaging which offers far better value than its other German rivals such as BMWs and Mercedes. But let\u2019s face it the Passat was always considered more of an \u201cadult car\u201d or a \u201csensible dad car\u201d and it was never really something out of a petrol heads bucket list. But the Passat has more than a couple of tricks up its sleeve to settle this misconception. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Passat, one of VW\u2019s group’s most popular global platforms was sold in numerous body styles from the stylish CC Coupe to the suburbia-friendly wagon, but VW, known for its over-engineering prowess, is known to go overboard even with their seemingly modest entry-level models. So when it came to giving one of their best-selling platforms a fast model since all of its rivals had one, VW did no shy away from over-engineering that either.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Enter the most underrated wagon from Wolfsburg, the Passat W8 Wagon. A car so crucial for the brand that it lends the basis for what would later give rise to Bentley’s W12 and Bugatti\u2019s W16.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Under the hood of this seemingly understated wagon (manufactured from 2001 to 2004) sat an engine that can only be described as \u201cexperimental\u201d at best. The W8 or the WR8 where the R stands for Reihenmotor which means inline in German was essentially two VR-6s with two cylinders chopped off, glued together at a 72-degree angle onto a single crankshaft. This engine only put out 270 horsepower which isn\u2019t much considering its 4.0 Liter displacement but the focus with this motor was not performance but to get the seamless thrust throughout the powerband (which was required for luxury cars like the Phaeton and Bentleys) that the engine delivered. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This engine was not frugal by any means and at $40,000 even the vehicle it came with did not seem like a wise financial decision at the time. The company only managed to sell 1277 units in the US out of which only 10 are known to carry an old-school stick shifter (which if can find today, will be an absolute goldmine).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The W8 engine had no other purpose but to prove a point, that it was possible and this is made clear by its short-lived production run of just 4-years. A W8 engine with less than 300 horsepower was never destined for unmatched success, no sir, it was just to see how half a Bugatti engine would fair in the real world and if it did, it could be easily scaled up to fit Veyron’s application, and what better way to test it than put it in an econobox that would have to take all sorts of punishments from the school run to grocery shopping and the occasional cross-country trip to meet grandma and grandpa. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And boy did that engine rise to the occasion. But after 15 years, it is safe to say the people who managed to hold on to their Passat W8 wagons have a future classic at their hands especially if it’s a manual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the early ’90s, the man himself decided to embark on a pet project, to make a luxury car that could dethrone the Mercedes S-class. So Mr. Ferdinand Piech famously laid out the following criteria to the team responsible for the Phaeton Project: <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Phaeton should be able to drive at 300 km\/h with an external temperature of 50 degrees centigrade whilst maintaining an internal cabin temperature of 22 degrees centigrade.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n Even though the Phaeton’s speed was electronically limited to 250 km\/h, it did not stop Piech and the team from over-engineering this autobahn missile. Staying true to VW’s rich part sharing history, the D1 Platform of the Phaeton was top-tier stuff which later down the line was shared with the likes of the Audi A8, the Bentley Continental, and Flying Spur. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The concept D prototype presented at the 1999 International Motor Show in Germany was enough of an indication of what was to come. The Concept D with its hatchback design, AWD drivetrain, Air suspension, and the V10 TDI motor was enough of an indication of what was to come, but the W12 was a bigger surprise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Moving from Piech’s one pet project to the next:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The story starts with the Bugatti EB 118, the first design prototype created after the accusation of the prestigious Bugatti moniker and conceptualized in record time. The nomenclature stood for the first concept car with 18 cylinders. The luxury coup\u00e9 with its specifically designed 6.25-liter front engine was presented by the newly revived auto marque at the Paris Motor Show for the first time in October 1998.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n So the EB110 in itself was quite groundbreaking but it used a fairly conventional V12, however, the quad-turbo setup was way ahead of its time and the fact that it could put all its power down without exploding was quite an achievement for the time. But the EB110 was far from the first step. Everything from the W8 to the W12 and the rest of the 18-cylinder concepts which include the EB218 luxury sports saloon from 1999, including Mr. Piech’s claim of creating a wild production supercar back in the year 2000, with an output of 1001 horsepower seemed outlandish at the time. Ferdinand Pi\u00ebch\u2019s premise was clear: a Bugatti had to be instantly recognizable everywhere and by everyone. His reference point was Ettore Bugatti\u2019s motto: \u201cIf it\u2019s comparable, it\u2019s not a Bugatti\u201d and boy did he deliver.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n The hype was all real and it culminated with the unveiling of the first almost production-ready Bugatti EB 16\u00b74 Veyron when it was introduced at the Paris Motor show in September 2000 (coincidentally the same year as the W8 Passat). This marked the final specifications of the car and the only notable change was a 16-cylinder motor instead of the 18 because let’s face it, you’d need a full-size pickup truck just to carry the 18-cylinder motor. And to deliver the promised power figures, they opted to turbo this already ginormous engine with the addition of 4-turbos (could have just kept the two cylinders instead I guess) since they knew it was possible thanks in part to the EB110. So the final engine was an 8-liter W16 created by joining two WR8’s (yes the same basic WR8 from the Passat but with a lot of improvements) and the final figures sat at 1001 PS and 1250 nm of torque. So the next time you find someone driving a W8 Passat, let them know that they own half a Veyron or at least if they decide to twin-turbo the thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The “WR” engine layout, made famous by VW is commonly regarded by enthusiasts and engineers as one of the most complicated engines to have ever existed. A technological marvel that has a rich history and some of the finest minds involved in its creation. Let’s take a look at the journey of this motor and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":70,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[10],"tags":[15,14,12,13,11],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/motologstudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/motologstudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/motologstudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motologstudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motologstudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/motologstudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":146,"href":"https:\/\/motologstudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions\/146"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motologstudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/motologstudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motologstudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motologstudio.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Chapter 1 – The Obsession<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nDisclaimer:\n\nBefore I get yelled at by seasoned engineers and know it all's, I'd like to make one thing clear, here ill be talking with respect to the automotive application of the W-layout and not the numerous industrial applications that this engine layout has found over the years, including and not limited to the W3 and W6 engines used in motorcycles of the early 1900s and the infamous W30 engines made by Chrysler developed for tanks during WW2.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/motologstudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/8409c33173c204288391eeb6883c1575.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nChapter 2 – The fashionabily mundane Passat W8<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/motologstudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/Volkswagen_Passat_W8-back-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/li>![\"\"](\"http:\/\/motologstudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/cc975e8fef52fef31a5052e21e20d6a6.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/li><\/ul><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/motologstudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/13137-PassatW8engine.jpg\")
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<\/figure><\/li><\/ul><\/figure>\n\n\n\nChapter 3 – The Word’s Best Saloon<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/motologstudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/15630119.jpg\")
<\/figure>![\"\"](\"http:\/\/motologstudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/426458ff7db2992eb36f0a2ca77447e0-1.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChapter 4 – The Word’s Fastest Frenchman<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/motologstudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/f644496ee19329394f1847a1dd028344.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/motologstudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/01bugatticoncepttgok-1024x576.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/li>![\"\"](\"http:\/\/motologstudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/2000_Bugatti_184VeyronConcept4.jpg\")
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<\/figure><\/li><\/ul><\/figure>\n\n\n\n