Where Did All These V-10's Come From?
Dec 03 '00 (Updated Dec 04 '00)
Porsche chose the 2000 Paris Auto Salon to debut its newest supercar, the limited-production Carrera GT. While any new Porsche is noteworthy, the Carrera GT captured attention for two reasons. First, it is arguably the first all-new design from Porsche since the 928 of the late 70's. The second reason, and the most newsworthy, is the engine. The Carerra GT will be the first Porsche exotic that isn't powered by a variant of the company's trademark Boxer flat six. Instead, Porsche chose to create an all-new V-10.
There are now V-10's available from Dodge, both in their heavy-duty pickups and the Viper series, and Ford offers a V-10 version of the superb Triton engine for its heavy haulers. The next entry from Lamborghini will challenge the Ferrari Modena with a new V-10 and Ferrari is rumored to be using a V-10 for its upcoming F60 ultra exotic. Mercedes Benz, Cadillac and BMW are also considering a V-10 for their next generation luxury sedans. In Formula One it has become the layout of choice, with every team dividing the mandated 3,000cc of displacement among ten cylinders.
It's quite an accomplishment for a design that had been totally overlooked for the first century of the automobile. The first V-10 engine didn't appear in a road car until Dodge put the Viper show car into production in 1992. Two years later it appeared in their redesigned Ram pickups, advertised as being as revolutionary as the trucks looked on the outside. But even when made as a million dollar Ferrari or Mercedes Benz Formula One engine, there is nothing revolutionary about the V-10 format. Despite the high profile names that have been attached to it over the last nine years it is an engine layout that was created by adversity and compromise.
In the early 90's Chrysler was in trouble-again. After avoiding bankruptcy several years earlier, the company had squandered the success of the K-cars on a corporate buying binge in the merger mad days of the 80's. By the end of the decade the company was nearly broke again and left with a lineup built almost exclusively on the aged K-car platform. With their back against the wall, Chrysler took an audacious gamble. They set out to remake the company as a world leader in automotive design. At the head of that class was the Viper concept car, powered by an "all-new" V-10 engine.
Well, sort of new. The Viper engine was a slightly reworked variant of the V-10 being made for the upcoming new Ram pickup, which had more than a passing resemblance to the 5.9 liter V-8 that had powered Chrysler cars and pickups going back to the late 60's. By developing the V-10 from the older engine Chrysler was able to get a new engine for a fraction of the cost of a true all-new design. And the additional two cylinders gave it a power image that buyers ate up. From the first Viper that rolled off the assembly line in 1992 the V-10 was a popular hit. So much so that Ford rushed to create a V-10 version of its truly all-new Triton engine to compete against Dodge in the heavy duty pickup market.
A world away from pickups that can pull a house down the road and hulking roadsters, Formula One adopted the V-10 for reasons that were just as circumstantial. In the late 80's the governing body of the sport banned the turbocharged engines that had dominated F1 for a decade. In that time the turbo engines had come to make as much as 1,000 horsepower from a mere 1.5 liters of displacement. The goal was to reduce power and slow the cars down, but during the turbo era the designers who created the cars had discovered huge improvements in aerodynamics. At the center of that was keeping the engne as small as possible. The tiny turbo motors were perfect for this, but now the designers had to make a choice. Some teams chose to retain the aerodynamic advantage of using a smaller engine and designed their cars around a V-8, while others took the aerodynamic penalty of using a larger engine to get the extra power that would come from a V-12. But Renault was one of the first engine builders to discover a winning compromise between the two. Their V-10 nearly matched the power of the V-12 with only a slightly larger footprint than a V-8. By the later years of the 1990's even Ferrari had to abandon their trademark V-12 for the new design.
But away from marketing and the rules of racing, is there anything special about the V-10? It depends on the application. At best, in a high performance sports car like the Viper, it's an even trade off. The most distinctive feature of the Viper engine is its immense torque. With nearly 500 ft/lbs available the Viper accelerates like the proverbial bat out of hell. But that has more to do with the size of the engine than the number of cylinders. The Viper V-10 has 493 cubic inches of displacement, making it the largest passenger car engine in the world by a wide margin. Using a V-10 design does allow it to run at higher engine speeds than a V-8 would with the same displacement, creating more top end horsepower. But despite making substantially more horsepower, the Viper is only slightly faster than a Chevy Corvette in no small part because the size of the V-10 demands a bigger car to carry it. Compounding the aerodynamic handicap, the V-10 will weigh more than a V-8. Taken together it is a zero net gain.
The future of V-10's in trucks is another matter. The advantage of the Dodge and Ford V-10's were, like the Viper, the ability to generate big torque numbers. Big enough to give these trucks towing capabilities close to the turbo diesel models. That was a huge attraction for buyers looking for a truck they could pull an RV or large trailer with a few times a year but didn't want to live with the noise and harshness of a diesel during weekday use. Everything was fine as long as gas was cheap, but the 50% spike in gas prices in the past year has exposed the achilles heel of the V-10 trucks. Ten miles per gallon is a good average where a diesel model can better that by 60% or more. While overall pickup sales remain strong we are starting to see rebates on the V-10 models for the first time, a sure sign that the market is beginning to pay attention to their thirst. The V-10's also now have competition from a new Heavy Duty 8.2 liter V-8 from General Motors. While it's fuel consumption is no better than the V-10's it does have one important advantage: It costs hundreds of dollars less to build. In the auto industry saving one dollar in manufacturing is a big deal. Going with the V-8 means GM can undercut the Dodge and Ford models in the showroom or make more money on each truck they sell.
What then of the new Porsche V-10? This is an engine inspired more by Formula One than by the Viper. Tuned more for top end horsepower than off the line torque, Porsche is projecting 550hp from the new engine, more than enough to keep it competitive with anything on the drawing boards at Ferrari or Lamborghini. (Naturally anyone who can afford to spend $400,000 on a car won't be concerned about gas mileage.) But unlike any other user of the V-10 so far, Porsche didn't have to go this route. They didn't have the FIA forcing them into a compromise between one engine design or another, and they didn't have an existing V-8 to develop the new engine from on the cheap like Dodge. It might have cost them more than working with a well-known layout like the V-12. It certainly cost them more than fitting the Carrera GT with a next generation version of its famous flat-six-or than developing that engine into a flat eight. (A design with no small amount of racing heritage at Porsche.)
The only reason for Porsche to choose the V-10 for its 21st century supercar is that it has, by chance and circumstance, become the high-performance engine design for the new century. It's as much a fashion statement as an engineering choice. But from such collisions of need and irrational emotion, icons like the Porsche flat six, Ferrari V-12 and small-block Chevy were born. None is the single best choice for a high performance engine, it all depends on what you like and what you can afford. And as long as the market can afford the excess of ten pistons, the V-10 will be with us.
-Brian Igo
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