today we're driving this 16 cylinder Bugatti the most cylinders ever put in a production car we're also driving this 10 cylinder Lexus a three cylinder Toyota and every number of cylinders in between how does adding more cylinders affect the characteristics of an engine and what does each one sound and feel like to drive damn well we're going to find out 9,000 this is a good car it is a good car starting with this a single cylinder car the car I'm driving is a PL p50 and even though it's only got a single cylinder it is scarier than any other car I've ever driven a couple years ago when I drove this same pel p50 I tipped it over the engine powering this peel is 110cc engine and as far as engines go it's about as simple as they come this is a fourstroke engine now Force stroke means there are four key things that happen with every cycle of the engine intake to suck in the air compression to squish that air together with gas power to combust the air fuel mixture and exhaust to get rid of the spent Fuel and air or as we like to say around here suck squeeze bang blow a single cylinder engine like this you get a very rhythmic thumping sound due to the constant uninterrupted exhaust pulses you also get a lot of vibration due to the constant starting and stopping of the Piston at the top and bottom of each stroke so what do you do you add more cylinders more cylinders doesn't just mean more power baby it means more balance we have a lot more cylinders to to go so let's take it up a notch and double the [Music] [Music] piston [Music] find your perfect sound at borla.com click the link below to learn more that brings us to this a two-cylinder engine it's a Morgan three-wheeler and as you can see it uses a v twin motorcycle engine on the front in a v twin engine both Pistons share the same crankshaft and are angled to form the shape of a v you'll find these v twin engines more commonly in bikes like Harley's and Ducatis it's a more complicated engine than a single cylinder but it also brings you more power now let's take this thing for a rip to see how it compares to the PE p50 but we're going with the owner somebody might recognize so Jay why did you buy this I like a it rolls explodes makes noise I like different kinds of Transportation this actually pretty fast car she'll top out a well over 100 over 100 mph oh yeah yeah easy this is a 2 L engine similar to what you find in a Harley but it's from a company called SNS it makes over a 100 horsepower which is pretty good for something that's only 1,200 lb it's fun to drive isn't it it really is like the single cylinder engine the v twin has a lot of vibration the engine is at a 45° angle so the cylinders fire in close succession but that also creates a lot of vibration and you do really feel it the only difference is is this one's not in between your legs now 90° v twin engines do exist and they do ride much smoother but they're really difficult to fit inside of motorcycles you're going to see that a lot of the other engines on this list have a lot of compromise just so that they can fit inside of a car a lot of those compromises are vibration what do you think that thing drives great motorcycle motor get the nice vibrations without having a balance it there's not a lot of modern cars that use two-cylinder engines besides this one and that's because they're not that practical for anything that isn't a bike so let's jump into our first real car engine three this is the Toyota gr Corolla a turbocharge hatchback with three cylinders and 300 horsepower that's 100 horsepower per cylinder now I probably know what you're thinking three cylinders calm down okay I'm going to explain now three cylinder engines have traditionally been used in economy cars like the geom Metro because they're cheaper to make and they get really good gas mileage but it also only made 50 horsepower a three-cylinder cars have never really been known for being fun until recently and that's thanks to a thing we like to call science hear that it's different but not bad now you'll notice that that exhaust sounds a little odd and that's because most of the cars that we drive on the roads today are even number cylinders that odd firing order creates a different Rhythm a different harmonic balance and that confuses our brain a little bit there's also 60° of crankshaft rotation without a power stroke occurring and because of that sounds a lot rougher than a 4-cylinder engine at lower [Music] RPM now this particular model is the circuited Edition it has 300 horsepower 1.3 l turbocharged [Applause] engine these engines aren't perfect each piston reaches top dead center the other two Pistons are balanced vertically but the rotational torque makes the engine want to flip over on itself so you have this abnormal twisting effect happening inside the engine caused by just an odd number of cylinders but Engineers are smart so you know what they do they throw a counterbalancer on there to prevent that imbalance that balancing shaft also means more weight so the engine can't rev as high or as quickly as a 4-cylinder engine so while three cylinders isn't four at the end of the day doesn't really matter cuz this thing freaking rips four and this brings us to a number of cylinders you're probably more familiar with four particularly the inline for now we were going to bring out our Subaru wrx's today so we could show you you the finite differences between an inline 4 and a flat 4 engine but we managed to break both of our Subarus in the same week isn't that grand so instead we'll be driving our $500 Civic that we swapped a K20 into we need to justify all the money we spent on this thing by putting in more videos anyway inline 4 engines are the most commonly used engines of all time this configuration dates back to the 1890s and is still found in everything from Hondas to Mustangs to BMWs much like the three-cylinder we just drove four cylinder are small and simple and that means they're cheap to manufacture affordable to maintain they're great on gas and they offer pretty decent performance right out of the box this engine is a lot more fun than the one that came in the car originally so with that being said let's get it out on [Music] track yeah dude oh I love this car all right so the first thing you might notice about this 4cylinder is that sounds really good and that's because it's a Honda but that's also because unlike the three-cylinder engine there's not a degree of crank rotation where this thing isn't making a power stroke and that makes a more harmonic noise it just sounds a little more natural to our [Music] [Applause] ears 9,000 oh God and it just downshift so nice I'm getting distracted I'm having too much fun okay I'm let me try one more time now not all four cylinders sound this good but because we've upgraded this one I mean that just opens it up and uh makes it sound amazing inline 4 engines do have perfectly balanced primary forces but there are some secondary forces that add some vibration to the drivetrain some manufacturers will balance out those secondary forces with counterweights or a balancing shaft but in a performance application like this will take the extra vibration in exchange for getting rid of that extra weight and that's why Honda's rule five but you want to know a greenish economy hatchback that has even more cylinders this one my mark iiii Volkswagen Golf with a five cylinder engine swap one 2 three four 5 I know what you're thinking I've never even heard the words five and cylinder in the same sentence but picture this you're a car company that wants to offer a larger engine in your base model Economy Car an inline six is too long but a V6 is too wi the solution 5 cylinder this golf did not originally come with this 5-cylinder motor though when I bought it but my very good boyfriends in North Carolina eurowise shouts to Mike no decided that I needed something with a little more power baby but the real reason you go with a 5-cylinder is the [Applause] sound now like the three-cylinder this 5-cylinder motor sounds a little bit different but that's just because your ears aren't quite used to it it's like comparing a song with four4 timing to a song with 54 timing also like a three-cylinder this engine needs a balancing shaft to keep it from rocking back and forth but a 5-cylinder has overlapping power strokes which make it sound and feel way smoother and believe me this thing sounds and feels smooth now later in this video we're going to drive a car with a V10 in it an engine that a lot of people say is the best sounding motor of all time a 5-cylinder is basically one cylinder Bank of a v 10 essentially half the best sounding motor of all time now my golf makes 327 horsepower to the wheels but to show you what these 5-cylinder motors are really capable of we borrowed this Audi RS3 it's also got a 5 cylinder engine and it makes 761 horsepower you ready jar damn dude when the turbo hits I know that is a 5-cylinder awesome if you've been following along at home you know that next up is six so here is one of the most legendary six-cylinder Motors ever six there are a lot of different six-cylinder configurations you've got the Flat 6 like you'd find in a Porsche then there's the V6 which is probably the most common six-cylinder layout there's also the VR6 something Volkswagen debuted in the 9s but there's a different six-cylinder layout that tickles my fancy and that's the inline six inline or straight 6 engines have been used in a lot of European and Japanese sports cars over the last few decades the 2JZ and the rb26 are two legendary straight sixes but there's another brand famous for putting them in their cars that's BMW So today we're going to be looking at one of the best inline sixes ever made the s54 under the hood of my E46 M3 oh yeah wo baby now one of the reasons that BMW has used the straight 6 engine for so long is that it makes really good power in a pretty small package BMW makes sports cars for people to want to go fast in addition to making a lot of power one of the reasons that BMW and a lot of other manufacturers have stuck with a straight 6 is that it's inherently balanced Pistons move in pairs and they kind of cancel each other's movements out so it runs very smooth this engine won best engine in the 3 to four L category I think almost every year it was I want go to that award show yeah me too I want to hear the speech that the engine gave yeah every just starts clapping cing all right this engine is going to be pretty tough to beat but there are a lot of engines left on this list and up next is seven seven all right you're probably thinking there's no way those guys are going to drive a seven cylinder car and that's where you're right bucko because no manufacturer ever put a 7-cylinder engine into a production car but one guy did put a 7 cylinder radial engine from an airplane into his pickup truck check it out hey donut I'm Gary KS and this is my 39 Plymouth radio truck built using a 195 cesma C plane engine and I'd love for you all to come out to Colorado and run it but for now hey watch [Music] this so in a radil engine the cylinders are arranged in a circle as the Pistons go up and down spins the crankshaft which the propeller is attached to and there you go they're pretty large pretty imprac for a manufacturer put in the car and that's why that hasn't been done so thank you so much to Gary for showing us what it would look like if a manufacturer put a plane engine in a car we got a bunch more engines coming up that you're probably more familiar with like this one eight and that brings us to a big one eight cylinders and no surprise we've got the most famous engine layout of all time the V8 V8s have been commonly used in cars for nearly a 100 years now and that is because they are extremely versatile you can find them in everything from trucks to luxury cars to supercars and the engine and we have today is a big old Rowdy American one it's an 800 horsepower LSX under the hood of the official dut drift car driven owned and built by Donut's very own shop daddy Adam canav so this started out as a $500 bear shell that I literally dragged onto an open trailer that I had we've got our LS in here that bolts right in we've got a drivetrain to handle all of that horsepower that's what's really cool is there are so many parts for this car that I really didn't have to modify too much it's it's a bolt-on affair with this guy also this car is in Forza want to go for a right yeah emely [Music] Welly so want to drive uh yeah [Music] all right so now that we've established that V8s are fun let's add even more cylinders for some of you absolute sickos out there 8 cylinders isn't enough you want something more powerful more refined and more pleasurable to the ears that brings us to the V10 the Lexus LFA now this is considered to be one of the best sounding cars of all time it's completely over engineered and Lexus they actually lost money on every single one they sold a v10s like these aren't super common engines they exist in this weird space where you need more power than a V8 but less weight than a V12 now this V10 is especially cool it's only 4.8 L that means it's light and it has light components a Dodge Viper on the other hand also a V10 8.4 l so this thing is a tiny little Ripper it allows this engine to rev to over 9,000 RPM also Lexus co-developed this Engine with Yamaha you know the company that's known for making pianos and trombones also snowmobiles and leaf blowers and they acoustically tune the entire car to sound like the Roar of an Angel Lexus L face yeah but what makes this car super interesting is that it has an even firing order so a Viper for example in between each cylinder firing it's not all the same so you get kind of a little bit more of a rumble this super smooth super steady this sounds futuristic yeah it does this whole car kind of feels futuristic and this is uh 11 years old right this car actually at the time set the world record for the fastest time to go from idle to Red Line red line is at 9,000 RPM if it could do that the fastest that's pretty ridiculous yeah I mean it's a small engine like 4.8 L is pretty tiny but it's naturally aspirated revs to 9,000 RPM sounds super good this car makes I think uh what a little over 500 horsepower 533 and it's not slow yeah 553 horsepower this thing uh it feels great I'm enjoying sending it through this little canyon this feels like a little bit of a heavier car I don't know exactly the curb weight but it definitely has a little bit of heft to it we talk about this all the time when you get behind the wheel of a car it's all about how it makes you feel about the experience that you're undergoing while you drive as someone who's driven a couple vipers in his time dude evenly balanced sounds good but also just like there's something about revving a car out which is just real fun it does a lot of fun this is a good car this is a good car but if we're being honest v10s are kind of for babies this is an even bigger smoother and more cylinder engine of course I'm talking about the V12 and you know that we had to go with a Lamborghini machine for this one now it's said that when fuchi or Lamborghini set out to compete with Ferrari he gave his engine designer a bonus for every horsepower higher than what Ferrari was making at the time the result was an engine so good that Lamborghini kept it in production for nearly 50 [Music] years you think anyone ever daily drove one of these oh honey how was work oh just drove a Diablo a V12 is two straight 6 engines now we know straight sixes are smooth but v12s are even smoother that's because the firing frequency is doubled when you combine that with even exhaust pulses and lots of Power Stroke overlap you end up with an exhaust sound like this first off I'm terrified driving this thing it's it's not real like I don't know if I've ever seen one in person I certainly never driven one if you're wondering why they don't put v12s in more cars the answer is pretty obvious they're huge they don't fit in a lot of stuff they're incredibly expensive to develop and even more expensive to maintain this is Peak Italian sports car you know what I mean like this is as good as it gets and I got to say man a V12 is the coolest engine there is nothing cooler dude I mean it's like it is everything I wanted it to be that was one of the best experiences of my life but we are not ending this video with 12 cylinders no there is one car with even more 16 and that brings us to the final car in this video there aren't a ton of cars in the world with 16 cylinders but this is one of them a Bugatti Veyron with a w16 engine not a v a w and VW is the reason that this engine even exists Volkswagen acquired Bugatti in the 9s and they set out to make a no expense spared Flagship vehicle with the purpose of being the fastest car in the world and this is what they came up with this car is owned by Manny kosin he has a YouTube channel that you should definitely check out he was nice enough to not only let us shoot with it but let me drive [Music] it yeah dude the W6 is ridiculous two vr8 engines join together at the crank that's right vr8 unlike a typical V8 a vr8 has staggered cylinder banks that form a much narrower angle allowing them to share a single cylinder head that makes it a lot more compact than a regular V8 and that's important because space is pretty limited when you're trying to jam two of these engines next to each other when you visualize how this engine is laid out you can see how insanely complicated and over engineered this is this is probably the crowning achievement of the combustion engine that we will ever see dude get out of town oh my Lord dude this is just like like I can't compare this to any other car I mean the takeoff for this car is 0 to 62.4 seconds you're not even pushing it I know this engine makes me like proud of humans the best stuff happens when a bunch of smart guys who are a little crazy get together with like a shared goal yeah and and they want to break records right just like no expense spared this is what you get and it's so cool Manny thank you so much for letting me drive your big a man definitely a dream come true Manny has his own YouTube channel it's awesome you should definitely check it out I'm going to put a link to that in the description below as well as a link to the channels of every owner who lend us a car for this video if you want to see me and the boys Drive every type of another kind of car check out this video and go to donam media.com get yourself some apparel or go to any Zoomies in North America or Blue Tomato in Europe This is the sickest job ever thank you guys so much for watching these videos so I get to do it all right I love you bye