actually, I wonder what WAS the most produced engine?

[Peter_Black]

Continuing on engine theme day, what was / is the single most produced motor ever?

I'm thinking its either the Chevy small block, OR the EA888 2.0L turbo 4 from the VAG group, seeing as that ended up in literally fucking EVERYTHING

[ItalianJobR53]

@Peter_Black naybe air cooled VW 4 cyls?
SBC has been made 5ever tho

[ash78]

@ItalianJobR53 I'm gonna say air-cooled 4. Not only is the beetle the most produced car ever, but the production run was SOOOO long and the same engine went into virtually everything they made from the 40s-70s (beyond the Beetle)

[Peter_Black]

@ash78 I think the corolla holds the distinction of most produced car ever, but in various flavours and guises

[Shop-Teacher]

@ash78 The SBC had a ton of industrial uses that spiked production even further. And if you include the 4.3 V6, which is literally a 350 with two cylinders cut off, production numbers are millions and millions higher.

[ranwhenparked]

@Peter_Black the Corolla doesn't count, it's the same name, but applied to multiple completely different cars with no commonality between them. If every Corolla ever made had been some variation on the original E10 from 1966, that would be different

[pickup_man]

@Peter_Black Isn't the Honda Super Cub the most produced vehicle ever?

And Honda being Honda, they used this motor, or close variants of it (might not techinically count) in fucking everything. Super Cub and all of its variants, dirtbikes, three wheelers, four wheelers, hell even the Grom while obviously not the same same, clearly evolved from this engine.

[ash78]

@Peter_Black said in actually, I wonder what WAS the most produced engine?:

@ash78 I think the corolla holds the distinction of most produced car ever, but in various flavours and guises

You're right, it's a neverendingly argument Toyota did tend to slap the Corolla name on a lot of different things, so it definitely wins the branding award, but maybe not the purity award...

[ash78]

@Shop-Teacher Solid point, and I'd definitely vote SBC if we were talking US/North America only.

[atfsgeoff]

@pickup_man yep. Base 50 (Honda and subsequent clones), by far.

[DrDanteiii]

Most produced engine?

[ranwhenparked]

@ash78 air cooled VW engine production is well over 30 million, 21.5 million Beetles + 6 million Type 2 vans + over 450,000 Karmann Ghias of all generations + the early Gol, the Vanagon, the Brasilia, Type 3, Type 4, Type 82, Type 166, Type 181, early Porsches, aircraft and industrial applications, etc. 30 million might be way too conservative

[atfsgeoff]

@DrDanteiii guarantee there is an order of magnitude more 50cc Honda / Honda clone engines than any one style/type of B&S engine

[TheModernLeper]

@Peter_Black Alfa Romeo made the 4 cylinder "Twin Cam" engine from 1954 to 1994. It used across the line up and the displacement changed over time. It migrated from carbs to mechanical fuel injection to electronic fuel injection.

However....it was Alfa Romeo, so I'm not sure how many they produced/sold, but 40 years is good run.

[pickup_man]

@atfsgeoff If we're including all of the Chinese knockoffs, which we should because parts are interchangeable, it's not even close.

[atfsgeoff]

@pickup_man said in actually, I wonder what WAS the most produced engine?:

@atfsgeoff If we're including all of the Chinese knockoffs, which we should because parts are interchangeable, it's not even close.

Agreed. I would conservatively estimate 300 500 million of the damn things built over the past 65 years

[Demon Xanth]

@Peter_Black
Between 1955 and 2011 GM sold more than 100 million SBCs. And they're still making them.

[awesomeaustinv]

@pickup_man I was going to say the same thing, the most-produced vehicle ever plus whatever else its engine snuck into must be the most produced engine.

[EssExTee]

@Peter_Black the Honda 4 stroke single jingle, seeing as it was in the most produced vehicle ever.

[415s30]

@atfsgeoff Fo Sho

[Ad absurdum per aspera]

Considered as a design pattern rather than a specific engine (I.e., counting all displacement and generations from the origin through the LS years), the small-block Chevy passed the hundred million mark somewhere in the mid 2000s and of course has kept right on going. Popularity and longevity make for a tough combination.

There may well be some things in the realm of small engines (think: Briggs & Stratton lawnmowers.) and motorcycle or scooter engines, that can beat that figure, especially under design-pattern rules, but that's going to be hard to beat for full-fledged automobile engines.

[awesomeaustinv]

@Peter_Black YOU ARE ALL WRONG, on the basis that Mother Nature has been building engines far longer than we have, and there are some estimated five million trillion trillion of them right now, not counting all the ones that have died throughout history. BEHOLD, the Flagellar Motor: The flagellar motor is unique among biological things as a thing that spins, making it technically a nanomachine, but part of a microscopic organism. This is how bacteria move around, and some bacteria have multiple Flagellar motors.

So there you go, Honda and Volkswagen and Chevy can suck it, they will never build as many engines as bacteria do.

[ItalianJobR53]

@awesomeaustinv WHAT!! I had no clue about this....TIL

[Qaaaaa]

@Shop-Teacher There were also industrial aircooled VW engines. And planes, and Zambonis. I'm going aircooled on this one.

[Shop-Teacher]

@Qaaaaa It wouldn't shock me.