I do not understand them. Maybe they are a bigger car but not too big, i.e. a Santa Fe or Kluger.
Do not have the economy of a 4 cylinder
Do not have the power of a V8
Do not have the long distance ability of diesels.
I ask this having once own a Santa Fe.
Is it inline or is it V6…
the rare V6 RB26DETT
RB30E .
@Archi: If it's a RB30E with a turbo, it's actually the RB30ET.
RB30 are inline (straight) 6, and not a V6.
@Gunnar: Yup.. also annoys me when BMW owners think their cars have V6's lol
You know they only bought the BMW for the badge.
@JimB: Im going to guess its because they think V6 = 6 cyl, whereas the actual designation is I6 but it doesnt really sound as "cool".
@ATangk: Probably because the V6 is/was much more common than the inline 6 back in the day.
I think most people refer to the inline 6 as the straight 6? But that could just be me.
Straight 6 is definitively more impressive than a V6 to me.
@JimB: Straight 6 is just better balance and everything. The only reason V6’s were popular is because it’s a tighter package.
I6 is just the simple designation, similar to W16 for Bugattis.
@anzacpaul: Maybe when I growing up in the 80/90s, about the same time FWD became popular
Commodore, Magna/380 Camry, Avalon, Maxima, perjero, honda, Mazda 626, Rav4, VAGs, Lexcen haha
The rare pick of the litter was the RB34DETT as it really triggers the Supra guys
@baronorder: Not sure how having to spend a barrow load of money on an RB26 to make it as good as a stock jz would trigger anyone.
Did you get overnight parts from Japan?
sadly though that car was stolen in yr2000 and was never to be seen again.
6 > 4
the maths is undeniable
this is beyond science
=If(6>4,"Bad fuel economy","better fuel economy")
your conditional always evaluates true.
Except for when 6 is less than 4
My 2022 Hilux I4 2.7L uses more petrol than my 2001 V6 Commodore used to use. Make sense of that.
My V6 leaves my son's V8 in the dust!
He has chipped it, mine is vanilla.
He paid double for his Tyres, mine corners faster.
My fuel gets me further, all my Tesla mates are searching for working chargers…….
V6 leaving the V8 in the dust in what terms though? From red light to 80 km/h the timing of a V4 with turbo (Suzuki Swift Sport for an example) would be faster than an average V6 or V8 in the market (and it'll be lighter though still will take corners better, have bucket seats etc) and on top of that all, will be cheaper to purchase & have amazing fuel economy. So all depends. If you want a V6 for the sake of having a V6 then good on you. I personally don't see the point of both V6 and V8 cars (probably why they both are slowly dying in this day and age). But we all are different. Though I don't quite understand, I have seen very happy people driving their inefficient and slow as hell V8s, burning fuel along the way, making weird noises and feeling as if they're driving a Ferrari with a smile on the face. Go figure how. lol.
My Daihatsu charade 3 cylinder (not V3) used to blow everyone off the road.
Nothing could beat it.
Pretty much the only reason is that there are like 2 RWD 4cyl cars. So if you want RWD it's pretty much 6/8 or rotary.
Towing capacity is the big reason a lot of these are popular too. Towing in a V6 is usually nicer than towing in a 4.
Very happy to drive my slow as hell v8. Guzzling about 20L/100km.
That glorious sound with the twin turbos spooling. Quite hard to beat.
V4 with turbo
Is this V4 from Honda or Ducati?
Wait, in a Swift?!
Yeah think they're a bit confused. V4 in a car is extremely uncommon (and shit)
A swift is probably one of the slowest 4cyl turbos
Tell your Tesla mates to stop looking for working chargers (at over 60cents/kWh) and simply charge at home. At 21cents/kWh from the Grid I get 500 to 600Km range for $14 charging at home. Much less with Solar panels. On the long drives Bne to Syd there are always working Tesla Superchargers.
but I saw on news.com.au….
aNd HOW mUch pLUToNium did IT takE to mAkE ThAT tElSA??!
tHEre’S NO plUToNiUm In My V8!
@YellowDieselGolf: There may not be plutonium, but there is platinum in that ICE car. No platinum in the Tesla, no catalytic converter.
If you can charge on solar (not crazy with WFH) it drops to whatever your feed in tariff is. For me its 5c. I drive a hybrid for now though so 4.0L/100km I think it doing OK :D
I have to say that this point might be mute (irrelevant) in a few years. As we are either going to Electric Vehicles (cleaner and quieter) or (what is predicted to be the case) own no personal vehicle (due to numerous factors).
Going back to your question. My viewpoints is…
V6 probably more problem than they are worth.
Usually its providing higher power and higher torque compared to 4 Cylinder.
Inline 6 cylinder tend to have inherently smooth running characteristic (less vibration). In brands like BMW, the 6 cylinder historically tend to be the most reliable model.
In older vehicles, the higher power and torque from 6 cylinder tend to give it better fuel economy in high-load application. Such high speed driving, or carrying heavy load (or the vehicles has a lot of ancillary function and is not particularly well provisioned in the elctrical department). As the engine doesn't need to be strained as much as 4 cylinder engine.
*moot = irrelevant
mute = without sound.
sorry, brain fart moment.
Wellllll… I guess, technically, everyone moving over to EV's… "mute" may also be the inevitable outcome :D
It's a moo point.
It's like a cow's opinion.
It's moo.
Joey?
…. that's a ~22 year old reference now BTW
time flies when you are having fun
Forgot to elaborate on the V6 problem. The engine has 2 banks. Which is like having 2x 3-cylinder attached to the car. Can mean more maintenance. In general, probably not worth the potential downside given the jump in performance compared to 4-cyl.
Unless there is inherent problem or perk with the specific engine choices.
Inline 6 is inherently balanced. It is a very good engine design, arguably the best, but it is long.
V6 are not balanced, they need offset crank pins and usually balancer shafts to try to make them smooth. But they are short, so they can be packaged way easier than a I6, so easily fitted to more vehicles for more ROI. Thats pretty much the only reason a V6 is chosen over I6 design.
You forgot the inline 5 though. Not balanced at high revs, but is smooth since it has cylinder overlap compared to a 4, and shorter than a I6, best of both worlds.
How about a boxer 6?
..arguably the best, but it is long.
Has anyone ever complained about something being 'long'?
I love my 4L V6. It's very smooth to drive, rock solid with no issues and personally prefer the naturally aspirated power curve over forced induction/turbocharged style.
I don't care about economy, fuel is relatively cheap here and have a 150L tank so non-issue.
where do you live? VenOzuela?
Sydney. 160’ish is half the price of UK.
For a non-commuter that only drives for shopping or leisure, that’s cheap.
If you commute, of course different story. But then you wouldn’t have a V6/V8 in first place either.
@JDMcarfan: You are being negged due to the taxes comment.
Taxes should never be increased for such things…
So many "unintended consequences" of one-track-minded policies like this.
For example, those people who are stuck with an old car and can't afford the transition would suffer.
It's like the original massively inflated solar feed in tariffs (44c+)…. those that could afford a house and solar for it at inflated prices benefitted with reduced power costs. Those that couldn't afford a house or to shell out for solar for that house pay more on power to compensate the higher costs for ~10 years.
Also, the trucks bit also doesn't make sense - there's a fair bit of sunk cost in trucking/transport infrastructure and a long way technology rollout needs to improve before we will see EV trucks doing long haul through central Australia!
Not to mention the embodied energy in existing vehicles that takes a long time to outweigh prematurely dumping them to landfill or energy-hungry recycling to replace them with a lithium-laden new one. Destroying old things (or making them unnaturally economically obsolete) instead of using them their full life potential is an environmentally bad outcome.
The best environmental improvement we as a society made was replacement of CFC and current HFC replacement programme over a few decades so that there was enough years that no one had to throw out existing equipment. We are well on the way to the green transition now, just be patient.
@MrFrugalSpend: Everyone's entitled to their opinion and I understand the negative feelings towards my comments. I still stand by mine. Likewise your comments are fair and reasonable, however just to note I wasn't talking to the electrification of trucking (that's a long way away). As you can tell by my username I love cars (specifically ICE's) but I still like to take consideration of the changing nature of the world & society
Australia's emissions standards are notoriously weak and even worse for the trucking industry (what I meant by the penalising is to promote greater use of Euro5/6+ trucks in Australia to reduce the emissions output of the sector and incentivising via potentially larger fuel tax credits for companies operating Euro6+ trucks). We can live without trucks in Oz and we have not alternative.
With comments over "unintended consequences", sure there are such consequences for everything but as one of the highest income nations in the world, our fuel costs (specifically taxation rate of fuel) is way under-par to our international counterparts and on-par more so with developing nations with government subsidies or oil producing nations.
All I'm saying is that the regular consumer should be ready to accept higher fuel prices (by way of higher taxation), and there should be more robust systems to ensure that the extra income goes to environmentally-friendly infrastructure.
I understand the sentiment about those not able to afford the transition (I can empathise with my upbringing) however many in Australia forego a 4cyl camry for a 6cyl falcon, simply due to the latter being slightly cheaper (& fuel not being a major concern).
Likewise you still get new manufacturers selling non-electrified models (Corolla for example) here when international markets (UK) for similar models are all Hybrids/PHEV only
Again happy for people to agree/disagree (just my 2c)
@JDMcarfan: Agree you can have your opinion, and we can agree on some things and disagree on others.
I just believe in looking at the holistic impact of government using a big stick to influence behaviour in the manner you suggested. Taxes are supposed to be levied to fund government functions - They shouldn't be used to penalise people especially in a way that can harm the economy in a counterproductive way and hit people differently based on their ability to buy something expensive to reduce their tax or not.
If you said give a tax break on sale of EV (where it makes sense for meeting a government objective), whilst I don't love it, perhaps I'd consider that differently, as someone in the market for a car may choose it over ICE - however penalising someone who is stuck with their old ICE who can't afford to make ends meet won't make them by an EV, and neither should it if no one wants their perfectly functional old car. Our disposable society is a far bigger environmental problem than electric vs petrol cars. How much plastic is in that old car you want to make uneconomical?
Since fuel excise and GST (~46 cents/litre + 10% on the total) is already used to fund our roads, EVs are actually creating a tax problem for the government as the higher the EV take up is, there will be a budgetary shortfall for paying for that government function. Especially if people generate the solar at home. Tax should be fairly proportionate to use, it wouldn't then be fair to make a poor petrol driver pay 100% of road costs by increasing their taxes whilst EV drivers pay none (especially when they don't necessarily make that big of an environmental gain, especially if using brown power from the outlet and disposing batteries regularly)
I'm also sick of people trying to say Australia isn't pulling its weight environmentally. There's no one-size fits all as we all have different characteristics. Like you say, our long distances mean we need things like trucks and planes to function that at this time needs fuel.
Australia lets powerful influencers like Europe measure environmental things in a biased way that suits them (e.g. measure a certain sector's energy use per capita). The reality is the environment is area / land mass / ocean area based. Australia is already miles ahead of much of the world as evidenced by our clean air - our wide open vegetated spaces and surrounding territorial waters area means we have very little emissions per square km on a world scale.
120 series Prado?
Me too! Drives so much nicer than the crappy diesels. As long as you can afford to fill it up :)
If I’m not mistaken it’s an fj crusier. Seems to recommend them occasionally.
An FJ so Prado's baby sister sharing same chassis and many components. Super capable offroad and great for towing too.
I've got a pre 2000 Prado VX Grande (V6) and it still going strong. The leather seat cracking but everything else is still running great. Not bad for 30 years.
It does cost $200 to fill up both tanks :-(
Had a V6 Camry and it was a pleasure to drive compared to the V4.
I've got a pre 2000 Prado
Not bad for 30 years.
Say what?!
Nope, 120 series Prado have 180L tanks, priceless.
1GR!
What Are The Point of V6 Cars?
why not the I6 cars?
Why not have both 🤷♀️
Short answer
The US market prefers Petrol over Diesel.
Long answer
Weird question.
Assuming Naturally Aspirated
In terms of power/torque
4<6<8
In terms of fuel economy
4>6>8
Of course the 6 is worse than a 4 in terms of fuel economy and worse than a 8 in terms of power.
But it's got better economy than an 8 and more power than a 4. That's its advantage in larger/heavier vehicles.
It also doesn't have the DPF issue that Modern Diesel's all have for city drivers.
The "just take it on a highway cruise for a few hours every fortnight" excuse is dumb when there is a better alternative in a Petrol 6.
These days the 6 is being squeezed out by turbo 4's as the turbo bridges the power/torque gap without sacrificing too much fuel economy advantage, but at the expense of long term reliability and increased servicing costs.
Higher end diesels don't have the DPF issue as bad if at all apparently.
We have a low end diesel that doesn't even indicate when a burn is happening. Just gotta hope its doing one.
The diesel donk in the Toyotas for the last 5 years has had horrible DPF issues.
They also have very high servicing costs when the injectors fail.
Diesel injectors are normally around $500 each plus labour, ouch.
@Sinnerator: They also normally last 200,000 kms give or take depending on various factors, so not really that bad in the big scheme of things.
My last ute was a Colorado with 4JJ1 engine and 215,000km on the clock. The injectors we are still original and in good condition.
@stewy: That's because it was the engine was supplied by Isuzu, they have a notoriously good reputation for their diesel engines
if you have a dpf and travel short distances only, you will have issues with the DPF clogging. Not if, not maybe. WILL
A weird question? You bet!
If you merely based on power/torque then a massive train engine would beat all of the above but would it be able to beat even a tiny 3 cylinder car in a 0 to 100 race? You'd be surprised if you take weight of the car, surface area of tyres (friction with the road) also into the consideration above. Lighter car with V4 (and obvious lower power/torque) might actually kick off faster than a heavier V8 even without turbo. V8 may eventually catch-up at 150 km/h but would it matter when the max speed here is 110 km/h anyways.
Lighter car with V4 (and obvious lower power/torque) might actually kick off faster than a heavier V8 even without turbo.
Hahaha, I call bs not only on there being a "v4" but also a non-turbo 4pot turd beating and staying ahead of an 8 cylinder until 150kph. Rotfl
Even a 25 year old V8 falcondore will leave a non turbo il4 for dead. Leave alone a V8, a V6 will crush.
My NA inline 4 smokes v8s any day. You know why? It weighs 170kg.
V4 engines also do also exist. Quite common when it comes to bikes, but admittedly very rare in a car.
My 2022 Dmax takes about 35-40 mins of driving from a cold start to warm up and complete a DPF regen cycle. I do long freeway trips every few weeks but it still will need to complete regens in between those long trips. I'm not game enough to keep interrupting the regen cycle, so if it's trying to regen, I just do an extra 10 or so mins of driving on the way home from work to make sure it completes the burn.
I agree that petrol engines are probably better now for most people, however, I'd pick a 4 cylinder hybrid as now being the best for city driving. Acceleration almost on par with a 6, fuel economy better than a 4 and more refined in a city environment, especially stop start traffic.
Straight 6 FTW.
I've mostly owned turbocharged 4s.. but I'd take a 6 cylinder over them, preferably with an inline configuration and a turbo.
Turbo Barra I6 FTW.
N54 FTW.
N54 was replaced for very good reason.
B58 >N54.
Probably the best cheap powerful and reliable engine ever made.
Pity the rest of the car (bar the ZF 6 speed) weren’t great.
Plenty of other straight sixes come with better bodies than FoMoCos' And you can fit a barra in any of 'em. In factory form, some even engines that perform far better than a factory barra…
6 is between 4 and 8. It’s fit for purpose for many vehicles that want more than 4cyl power, but better economy than 8cyl.
V6 came about because in line 6 engines start to get really long and take up much more space under the bonut thingy. I6 are too big to fit transversely for front wheel drive.
I'm glad that BMW have stuck with inline 6's as they are easy to work on/service and so much smoother than V6s.
Merc has seen the light and have switched back from V6's to I6's.
I had a 130i, that engine was perfect. Thankfully never had to service it myself.
BMW 6s are surprisingly easy to work on. Everything is laid out logically.
Pity about the plastics used in the cooling system.
@JimB: Just have to change it regularly enough. The trouble is people don't make the effort to understand the rules around servicing the cooling systems, and changing plastic parts that are beyond their 'use to' dates… and most non euro mechanics don't like doing anything fiddly that they don't appreciate the importance of, many even after is blows up.
Yes. Have a look at a V6 production line, it really shows the economy of space, assembly etc with front wheel drive.
The point of a V6 is that you can fit a V6 in the space of a 4. So you can offer purchasers the choice of a smaller lighter more economical model, or a more powerful V6 version of the same car, with very little extra vehicle size and weight and cost. A straight 4 and a V6 are about the same length, and a V6 isn't much heavier, but it can be quite substantially torquier.
Offering a straight 4 and the option of a V6 is no different to offering a straight 6 with the option of V8. You meet the needs of more customers at not much extra cost.
Of course these days turbo technology has advanced to the point where adding a turbo to an inline 4 can be the alternative to a V6. You don't need the extra displacement of a V6 to get more torque. Developing a V6 motor just for the small increase in sales you get by having a V6 model as well as the 4 is really expensive in these days of emissions limits and certification. But a turbo model has the same problem. So if a manufacturer has a V6 engine that it has developed and certified for another model, the easiest cheapest answer is to just offer the same engine engine as an option in other models too. It spreads and lowers the costs.
Archi on 07/02/2023 - 11:33 Comment score below threshold.
