Engine Art

Of the many obligatory beauty shots one must take of any car up for review, the engine bay is the easiest to shoot. There aren’t that many angles to choose from, and there’s no hiding. Either the engine is a beauty, or it’s plain ugly. And that’s one more reason I personally like just looking at supercars. I don’t have to drive them to appreciate them. They’re pieces of sculpture on four wheels, and the engine is just one more detail made up of many intricate details.

Ferrari engines are arguably the most photogenic, and they are understandably proud to show off their workmanship. The mid-engine Italia even has a glass hatch so you can gaze at the perfect symmetry without having to lift it; this is awesome for bystanders when the owner parks at the curb. Two longitudinal, red cylinder heads separated by a swath of silver aluminum, with black exhaust piping leading directly to the back manifold, concealing what has to be a rather elegant arrangement of pipes designed to emit that trademark Ferrari shriek. An oil filler cap sits dead center and just aft of the cylinder heads, and whose precise machining must also have taken a bit of man hours as well. Just staring at an engine like that, one can’t help but conclude that aesthetics must have been a huge part of the design as well. Makes me wonder if the designers had a couple of arguments with the engineers. Whatever happened, my pedestrian self can only assume that Form and Function met a happy compromise.

It’s not always the case. Lamborghini take a slightly different tack, at least with the Aventador. The V12 is a beast, and they’re not shy about letting you know it. I remember during the press briefing last year that a mockup sat in the room, occupying about as much space as your average dinner table. It was black and silver and looked like something made for waging war. Black cylinder heads, twin banks of cylinders joined together with all sorts of hard edges and protrusions, and gray, snake-like exhaust pipes the size of Superman’s quads. It would have looked at home inside the fuselage of a P-47 Thunderbolt. Seen inside the engine bay of the car, however, it was also protected by a cage of cross braces, looking less like an engine and more like a nuclear bomb minus the red countdown timer. And did I mention the sound that it makes? Absolutely spellbinding, the sort of Wagnerian roar that makes you stop in your tracks and wonder if this is how a strafing attack from above must sound like.

I can think of many more fascinating engines, functional pieces of sculpture that look good sitting still and making the car go really fast: the brutal aesthetic of the Dodge Viper V10, the Bauhaus-like VW W12 of the Bugatti EB110, and the massive appeal of the Porsche Panamera Turbo S V8. I think the latter is the most easily admired of all of Porsche’s recent dynamos, mainly because it’s easier to behold an engine when you have a proper hood to reveal it rather than having to peek through the back as with the 911 (it’s even tougher with the Boxster/Cayman). The Panamera Turbo V8 looks like a mini-reactor in there; carefully sculpted head covers, hoses and belts neatly tucked away, and just a little bit of carbon fiber accents to add some extra zest.

Everyday production cars are the challenge. There can’t be that big a budget to prettify a mass market engine like the Toyota Altis or Honda CR-V, so the simplest solution these days is the black, plastic cover. It covers a multitude of sins, ranging from the odd pipe leading who-knows-where, fan and steering belts whirring deep in the bowels, or just smothering up a few decibels of unpleasant engine noise if it’s a diesel. There is a bit of appeal looking at an engine bay that was so obviously designed to both look neat and easy to service; check out any generation of Honda Civic or Toyota Fortuner. Then there are the ones so crammed with hardware that I admire the mechanic who must figure out how to squeeze his hands into the bay of something like a Jeep Grand Cherokee or Audi A4 TDI. You gotta have exceptional dexterity to get your fingers deep in there.

It’s still better than a couple of obsolete (the polite term is “evergreen”) examples from several model generations ago. Open the hood and behold a mess of pipe, belts, hoses and engine block with no pretense of looking pretty, or even filling up the bay as a proper engine should. Easy to service, hard to look at. The best solution is the easiest: close the hood, get going, and dream of one day owning a car that’s good to look at both inside and out.