Americans often hold up the iconic V8 engines of the past as the high watermark for vehicular excellence. From large pickup trucks to the heyday of the muscle car, these eight-cylinder powerhouses have come to define what many people think about when they picture a powerful engine. However, that's a pretty limiting idea of what a car's engine can be.
In the grand scheme of things, V8s can even look small compared to other mechanical beasts, especially when put against something like a V16 engine. Cars with V12 engines are already rare , and seeing a V16 in the wild is even less common. These massive 16-cylinder engines have powered trains and airplanes, so seeing one under the hood of a car is always noteworthy.
They're hardly new tech, though, as V16 engines have existed for over 100 years. To give a proper spotlight to the hulking engine, let's look at five different cars that have utilized the V16 over the years. [Featured image by Craig Howell via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY 2.
0 ] The V16 engine goes all the way back to airplane production in the early 1900s, but it didn't make its way into a production car until Cadillac put a 7.4L V16 engine in the 1930 Cadillac Series 452, referencing the 452 cubic-inches of displacement. To deal with its size, the four-door automobile needed to be massive in length, giving it quite an imposing silhouette.
Rather than design the V16 to mimic the V8 with 90-degree valves, the Cadillac V16 had them at 45-degree angles..
