BRIEFING: Review of the top 20 automotive engine families

Like vehicle manufacturing, the engine manufacturing sector is under pressure to maximise economies of scale by using common components and modules. Where vehicle manufacturers look to develop vehicles using a common ‘platform’ or architecture, engines belong to families, which employ a similar construction. Defining what makes a group of engines a family can be just as subjective as defining platforms, if not more so. To belong to the same family, engines should have common bore centres (similar to hard points on a vehicle's platform). This means there could be diesel and gasoline engines in the same family, for example. They could have different valve train and cylinder configurations and different layouts (in-line or vee). In some instances they could also have different cylinder block materials. This analysis includes engine families data from PwC Autofacts.