The original narrow V arrangement was patented by Lancia in 1915, apparently.

Don’t forget the pointless V 5 engine

While is true that the V5 was pointless (alongside the 1.8 turbo), it did make a lovely noise!

..., yes, they have a single head and the cylinders sort of nestle together. However it is not a conventional straight six by any means, the configuration means it is a lot shorter.

IIRC it was designed to go into a Golf transversely. And its powerful 6.0 litre derivative, the W12, allowed space for front as well as rear wheel drive, impossible for its early contemporary V12 rivals which often had to resort to pricey (and aesthetically dire) oversized rear tyres to get a grip.

I recall someone over boring the cylinders on a Triumph GT6 by offsetting the cylinder boring to remove the possibility of going through the cylinder walls.

What does that make it, straight six or V6?

Crooked six?

A precedent to the VW VR6 was the Lancia V4, which began life in the 1920s' It was a narrow angle V4 with one cylinder head. The Lancia engine was always referred to as a V4, so I guess the VR6 can legitimately be called a V6 !!!

"VR6" is just VW's name for their engine, like Jaguar XK, Chrysler Hemi or Lotus Twin-Cam!

Edited by Sofa Spud on 12/12/2024 at 14:37

A timely thread. Apparently the last car to receive a VR6 was built on 12th December.

It's past it's "sell-by-date" given the outputs from the 2.0 litre 4-cylinder engines - and proper V6 engines are available within VW Group.

Having just looked on Wiki it seems that the last mainstream VAG cars to use the VR6 were the VW CC in 2017 and Audi Q7 in 2015.

Since then its been used in Chinese made for the domestic and American market oddities none of which we would have seen.