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Auto Q&A: Complexity vs. cost
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Posted by editor Mon Oct 23, 2006 12:11:33 PDT
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0 responses 0 comments Dear Q & A: Back in the 1930s, there used to be a number of twelve cylinder cars on the market. Are there any today? And what is the purpose of having twelve cylinders anyway? Can’t the same horsepower and torque be obtained from an eight, with a lot less complicated mechanisms?  - Tom C.
Dear Tom: To deal with your last question first, the answer is generally yes. Complexity in any machine increases its cost, its susceptibility to breakdowns, and its difficulty to repair. So what’s the appeal of twelves? Smoothness. As the number of cylinders increases, vibration diminishes, as the otherwise jarring motions of pistons moving up and down in their cylinders cancel each other out. An example: Compare your single-cylinder garden tractor engine with the smooth six in a Toyota Camry or the eight in a Cadillac STS. There have been successful cars with two-cylinder engines, like the French Panhards, but riding in one of them was always noisier and shakier than in contemporary sixes, like the large Renaults or Peugeots.
There are plenty of twelves in today’s motoring world, but as you might expect, all very expensive sports cars and luxury sedans. Here’s a rundown on some of the better-known models you might see tooling around the posh R-and-R sites in Monaco or on the Riviera.
• The British Aston Martin (James Bond’s favorite make) Vanquish S, the fastest sports car that AM’s made so far, with a claimed top speed of over 200 mph. Its 5.9-liter V-12 develops 520 hp, 425 lb-ft of torque, and achieves zero-to-60 acceleration in 4.8 seconds.
• Only slightly slower, with a 186-mph top speed, is the AM DB9, sibling of the Vanquish. Powered by a 5.9-L engine that produces 450 hp, the 9 also lets you experience that quick rush as you blow by the other Vegas-bound tourists on I-15 just before the CHP radar clocks you for a very expensive ticket.
• Italy has long produced the world’s fastest cars, and its Lamborghini Murciélago carries on the tradition, with a 6.2-L engine giving it a 3.7-second 0-60 time and a top of over 200 mph. Next we’ll list some V-12 sedans.
• Ferrari has been making V-12s since 1947, mostly 2-seat sports roadsters, but its Scaglietti V-12 carries four at unsafe speeds in the mid-100s.
• Mercedes-Benz now produces a V-12 (after a half-century hiatus), a 6.0-L, 604-hp version with 738 lb-ft of torque, in its SL65 AMG sedan and CL65 AMG coupe models.
• Rolls Royce is in the V-12 competition with a 6.7-L, 453-hp, 531 lb-ft torque Phantom model. But Bentley, Rolls’s erstwhile “cheaper” offering, outdoes its sib by running a W-12 in its Continental GT (a configuration which has multiple banks of three cylinders each instead of the two banks of six in V-12s). The RR is slower and heavier, but the B manages a 4.7-second 0 to 60 and nears 200 mph.
• The Audi A8L W-12 Quattro and the VW Phaeton also sport W-12 engines, the latter with 420 hp, the former with a few more.
• Another pair of Germans, the BMW 760i and Maybach 57, fill out our sketch of available twelves. The Beemer offers 438 hp in its V-12 and the Maybach 543 hp in an engine block shared with MBs), that delivers a whopping 664 lb-ft of torque.
Not much emphasis on trunk size for grocery bags or on miles-per-gallon claims in ads for these beauties. But you do have quite a selection to choose from when you go shopping on Beverly Hills’ auto row for your next $300,000 car. Decisions, decisions.

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