W16 engine

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A Bugatti Veyron W16 engine

A W16 engine is a sixteen cylinder piston internal combustion engine in a W configuration. All W16 engines consist of four banks of four cylinders (two juxtaposed V8 engine blocks), coupled to a single crankshaft.

Volkswagen Group (Volkswagen AG) (VWAG) currently produces W16s. Volkswagen's design is a stretched form of its W12 engine, which is itself based on technology from the VR6 engine. The engine was introduced with the Bentley Hunaudieres concept car, a mid-engined sports car, which was never intended for production, and was later used in the Audi Rosemeyer concept (Bentley has been a VW Group holding since 1998).

The VR6 is a narrow angle (15°) vee six, designed to fit in the confined engine bay of a front wheel drive car. It is very short for a V6, because the cylinders are staggered, even cylinders moved forward, odd cylinders moved backward to reduce the length. Joining two such designs together into a W engine creates a design that is much shorter than a V with the same number of cylinders, but not too much wider. Volkswagen's W12 engines utilize two VR6-like sets of cylinders mated at 72 degrees, and the W8 consisted of two VR4s at the 72 degree angle. In the W16, each side is made up of eight cylinders, but the 'bank' angle is increased to 90 degrees. The W16 can be thought of as two banks of two sets of VR4s joined end to end.

Note that this design differs from the W18 engine that Volkswagen produced for its Bugatti concept cars of 1998 and 1999. The narrow angle of each set of cylinders allows just two camshafts to drive each pair of banks, so just four are needed in total. For this reason, the engine is sometimes described as a WR18.

The VWAG W16 engine with four turbochargers is used to power the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 (formerly the fastest production car), producing 1,001 hp (746 kW). It is also reportedly being considered for use in other VW Group products, albeit probably without turbocharging.

v • d • e Reciprocating engines and engine configurations

Straight	Single · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 8 · 9 · 10 · 12 · 14

Flat	2 · 4 · 6 · 8 · 10 · 12 · 16 · H

V	2 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 8 · 10 · 12 · 16 · 18 · 20 · 24

W	8 · 12 · 16 · 18

Other inline	U · Square four · VR · Opposed · X

Other	Hemi · Radial · Rotary · Deltic · Pistonless (Wankel)