V8s and V12s are regular features on high end cars, both luxury and sports/supercars, so I wonder why so few manufacturers have chosen the V10 route. It can’t be that F1 has suddenly made them sexy? Can it?!
Off the top of my head, I can count V10 engines in the Porsche Carrera GT, the Lamborghini Gallardo, the new BMW M5 and the VW Touareg and Phaeton V10 TDi. Maybe there are a few more I’m unaware of, but certainly not as many as V8 and V12 engined cars.
V10s are smaller and lighter than V12, while theoretically being able to produce more power than a V8. So why can’t I recall any more V10 engined cars?
And on a side note, could someone explain this statement to me please:
I’m guessing you are probably aware that F1 is moving to V8 engines next year (the rules also allow a rev-limited V10).
My guess is that the V8 engine that Ferrari has developed fits into their current chassis only with some sort of munged together adapter. So the idea is to run one car with the imperfectly mounted 2006 engine and one car with the 2005 engine electronically crippled to run only eight cylinders. Neither solution is likely perfect so until the 2006 chassis is ready in January they are going with two different compromise solutions.
However, now that I think about it, I wonder why Ferrari, or anyone for that matter, would test a crippled V10? It won’t produce accurate results because of weight and size issues, and the hybrid car itself would be mechanically different from the race car anyway. Obviously I’m missing something - I just don’t know what!
I’m no mechanical or engineering expert, but i seem to recall reading some years back that V10 engines were somehow inherently less balanced and more prone to vibration than V8 and V12 configurations.
Not sure if that’s the full story, or even if it’s true. I just seem to remember reading such a comment in my dim, distant, car-magazine-reading past.
I’m sure someone who actually knows what they’re talking about will be along soon.
Just a WAG but perhaps it’s that, a V10 with the last two cylinders chopped off. There is a precident for this with the old Chevy V-6 which was essentially a small block V-8 minus two. It had the 90º bank angle of a V8 along with the crank spacing for the remaining cylinders. It sounded like a V-8 with two cylinders not firing instead of like an even firing V-6.
They’re probably going to run a detuned V10 in testing until they complete development on their V-8. If you remember, Minardi had been allowed to run detuned V-10s next season before their sale to Red Bull. Might still be the case, I don’t know.
