Find Out Why Ferrari’s V8 Engine Won Engine of the Year if You Want to Become a Mechanic
For the past 20 years, a global team of nearly 70 automotive journalists has handed out the acclaimed International Engine of the Year Awards. The awards, broken down into 12 categories like Best New Engine, Best Performance Engine, and Best Electric Powertrain, recognize automakers that have taken engine and powertrain technology to new levels.
Undoubtedly the big winner at this year’s event was Ferrari and its 3.9-litre biturbo V8 engine. In fact, not only did Ferrari win the biggest prize of the event, but it did so for the fourth year in a row. Let’s take a look at how Ferrari’s V8 did at this year’s awards and what makes the engine such a masterpiece of automotive engineering.
Ferrari May Need a Bigger Trophy Room for its Biturbo V8 Engine
Ferrari’s V8 engine won the biggest award, the International Engine of the Year Award, by a long shot. The engine received 425 points from the judges, well ahead of the second-place Jaguar Land Rover full-electric powertrain with 328 points and the third-place Mercedes-AMG 4-litre biturbo V8 with 280 points. That wasn’t the only award the Ferrari V8 took home, however. It also took home the Best Performance Engine and Best Engine Above 650PS (641hp) awards.
In fact, since its release in 2016, the Ferrari V8 has won every Engine of the Year Award and has collected a total of 14 trophies. For that reason, it was hardly a surprise that Ferrari’s V8 was also awarded the title of Best Engine of the Past 20 Years to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the awards. Overall, Ferrari has now won 27 trophies since the awards began in 1999.
Anybody Who Wants to Become a Mechanic Will Be Impressed by the V8’s Engineering
The Ferrari V8 is certainly a powerful engine, capable of producing up to 710hp and 561 lb-ft of torque. While the incredible power of its V8 is enough to make any student in auto mechanic college envious, the judges didn’t make their decisions solely on the engine’s power. In fact, Ford’s 999 cc EcoBoost 3-cylinder Turbo has won the second most Engine of the Year Awards with three. It can be found in the practical but by no means powerful Ford Focus and Fiesta.
What really seemed to tip the scales in Ferrari’s favour was the fact that creating the V8 was a considerable risk for Ferrari. That’s because the current V8 is turbocharged. Turbocharging the engine was necessary in order to meet new fuel efficiency standards, but the decision was also controversial. As you may know if you want to become a mechanic, turbocharging tends to create a delay in throttle response and it dampens the exhaust roar that Ferrari cars are famous for. Since Ferrari is a relatively small company, if the biturbo V8 wasn’t a hit, it didn’t really have a backup engine it could use instead. Luckily, the engineering magicians at the Italian automaker put those doubts to rest and managed to create a turbocharged engine that still sounds like a Ferrari while producing no noticeable throttle lag.
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