That's a series of engines, not a single model. The FIAT FIRE [1] series has been in production for 36 years from 1985 to 2021 and, maybe you wouldn't expect it from FIAT, those engines were reliable.
The Jag XK platform had 45+ year run. I'd bet that as long as the 911 is made, it'll have an inline 6 and to someone's thinking it will be the same platform as the air-cooled version from 1964.
Engine architectures tend to last unless they are bad. They can do a lot on one also, the Toyota GR platform started out as a fairly vanilla V-6 but it has variations with GDI and variations with turbochargers and has been used a lot of different vehicles. A lot of different variations with different levels of compressions and such. It's basically the block and cylinders configuration.
I'll shout out the K-series though, it's a shockingly good platform. Lots of little details have been thought through, it's relatively simple, inexpensive and reliable and maybe one of the easiest engines to work on. If you were knew to cars and wanted to start wrenching, the K-series is a pretty good place to start. It can take boost and make power and has lots of aftermarket support. I know civics aren't everyones cup of tea and it's not a big V-8, but I've yet to meet an engineer that isn't at least slightly impressed by the k-series.
Came here just to rant about the FIRE and the Firefly.
The Multijet was also extremely reliable.
Instead, they were tossed aside to promote whatever garbage came out of citroen design centers, i guess to achieve the destruction of stellantis. (except in south america, they still get to use the Firefly)
The headline isn’t really true. The K series of engines has been in production for 25 years but it has been redesigned along the way.
The article mentions this further down:
> The K20C is Honda's current-generation of the K-Series range, upgraded to deliver strong real-world efficiency and long-term reliability across the Honda and Acura catalogs. It's also a redesign that meets stricter global emissions rules and tighter thermal demands that come with modern turbocharging.
The original K20A has been out of production for a long time.
Each iteration of the engine shares a lot in common with the previous iteration, but the redesigns have been significant enough that I wouldn’t say it’s accurate to claim that one engine has been in production for 25 years.
This comment made me question the specifics of my mental model pushrod vs overhead cam engine. I found this site that has three nice gif’s which was exactly what my visual brain wanted to see for comparing the differences - https://www.samarins.com/glossary/dohc.html
Thanks for the comment as it was the impetus for me to expand my engine knowledge today!
I used to view them with disdain - a clearly obsolete design GM kept using because they're cheap or lazy or some such.
I no longer hold that view. GM's pushrod V8s are considerably smaller than their competition, and lightweight relative to their displacement, for which there is famously no replacement.
Someone will, because it's a useful form factor. And that someone is gonna be the people who are the experts in it, which is pretty strongly arguably GM.
There have been sooooo many SBCs shat out into the world in industrial applications that even if GM stops making them someone will keep making them. You can't make a compatible single replacement because you'll break a ton of applications. You can't make a ton of different replacements because that's not economical. Only makes sense to keep making them.
Definitely, and the old carborated beasts just work and can be fixed with minimal tools and ran off of just a few wires.
I've been enjoying watching a coworker resurrect his M715 Military Truck (basically a government J-Series truck from Kaiser/Jeep) with a fresh blueprint SBC and a mix mash of GM and aftermarket drive train parts.
It may be the least efficient truck I've ever ridden in, but it can reliably pull tree stumps out of the ground.
A lot of bigger engines are running right on the edge of oiling problems these days. With fuel economy rules being what they are it's just how it is. GM isn't special in this regard. Ford is killing a lot of cams and lifters (a problem GM fought through some years ago).
Meanwhile Toyota[1] is recalling blown up turbo v6s left and right (for problems that you can't just dump different oil in to solve) because they didn't invest in keeping a big v8 on the cutting like GM did and they didn't invest in making small turbo stuff last long like Ford did.
[1]Mentioned not because they have unique problems but because who if not a Toyota fanboy makes a comment like yours
They spec the thinnest stuff they can get away with to add .0001mpg. Multiply that by all the Chevy 1500s GM makes or F150s Ford makes and you see the draw.
Sometimes it turns out that the thinnest stuff they can get away with just not quite thick enough at the margins or in transient conditions. And of course they stretch out the oil change interval to reduce on-paper TCO as well which doesn't help.
You can mitigate this with thicker oil (what GM did for the recall) by can go too far and create other oiling issues because thick oil drains back slower and going to some super high spec 0-W-<whatever> Euro oil may cause other problems related to soot and sludge so there's no silver bullet.
The "safe" advice most people give out is to use whatever the <nation with no emissions or fuel economy rules> version of your owners manual says to use for oil.
And if you have a high strung turbo engine you ought to take your oil change intervals seriously.
To be fair Ford's small turbos are also notorious for shitting the bed, but mostly due to cooling system failures or the terrible choice of still running a timing belt. (1.0L Ecoboost engines)
>terrible choice of still running a timing belt. (1.0L Ecoboost engines)
3.0 Duramax says hold my beer (for the readers not familiar, it has a wet belt driving the oil pump and it's mounted in the back making proactive replacement prohibitively expensive).
My jaded take is that they're sticking with the wet belt on what's generally a europoor economy car engine in order to force planned obsolecense.
I don't think that lack of reliability is the key factor for why new motors are still being developed. Fuel efficiency or changing emission standards are two points that come to mind that drive further optimizations.
Perhaps that's what's remarkable about these? They had architectures that could meet 2025 emissions standards, 25 years ago. That said the Honda "L" series engines are just as long-lived and are the even more efficient variety.
My favorite fact I used to tell people when I owned a 2008 Honda Fit was that parts of the L-Series engines was from Honda Powersport's Boat Motor lines. (the crankshaft if memory isn't failing me)
25yr is "meeting expectations" for any mass market[1] engine designed after about the mid 1970s or so.
A design that is both not fundamentally flawed in some way and cutting edge enough for its time to not quickly rendered obsolete the steady increase in expectations should go far longer. A design that is "ok" and cutting edge will probably go 20-30yr. A design that is behind the times, and very good (easier to not make wrong design decisions when you're not on the cutting edge) will probably do 20-30yr as well.
[1] i.e. not some specialty truck or sports car thing that could become not worth making due to a shift in market conditions for the few segments where it's applicable.
The torque steer on those things is unbelievable, they are really unsafe but a lot of fun. I drove one that had 'only' 160 HP according to the owner and it was incredible. Cars like that will get you shrinkwrapped but you will be smiling...
Classic Mini that meet with an bad end really do look like that, it is unfortunately very descriptive. Issigonis created an icon, and John Cooper improved substantially on it. Incidentally, one of Cooper's creations, the 'Twini' nearly killed him:
I've driven a lot of weird and interesting cars but none quite that scary. It felt borderline out of control all the time and I was happy to return it to the owner with all the parts still attached.
Another interesting one - that I didn't drive but the son of the owner did - was a TR with a massive Ford special products V8 shoehorned into it. If you live in eastern Canada and you're overtaken by something small and wicked fast with 'BAD TR' as the license plate, that was it. Getting in the passenger seat of that thing was an interesting experience, the engine took up half the footwell, and the clutch had so little throw that you couldn't really tell when it was depressed and when it wasn't. It certainly moved though.
Toyota 5A was in production 1987–2006, and IIRC was licensed to Chinese manufacturers afterwards. The A series as a whole lasted 1978–2006. Less modern than Honda K, but these were lovely engines. They just won't fail as long as you replace parts on time.
Just replaced the transmission on a 88 Honda motorcycle engine. China is still producing copies of it, lol. While the quality is probably not on par it's kind of amazing how long a good design can last.
I’ve noticed Honda puts an emphasis on reducing stress. I have a 20 year old Honda which still runs fine because everything about it seems “overbuilt” - other owners say it runs fine without coolant, oil, etc - just keeps plugging along.
You reminded me of a stunt/promotion I saw on TV in the 1970's where they drained the oil from a Japanese import and then ran the engine (red-lined it as I recall, perhaps a brick on the accelerator) until they blew the engine.
This was when there was a lot of grousing about those cheap (and fuel efficient!) Japanese cars catching on in the U.S. market.
Hilariously, the Japanese car just kept running and they had to intervene — maybe drain the radiator?
I wish I could find something about it but even ChatGPT comes up empty handed. Maybe it was a half-time stunt? I feel like it was in a stadium anyway.
> other owners say it runs fine without coolant, oil, etc
Um, no. Go ahead dump your oil and coolant, go drive your car, and report back how "fine" it did.
(No, please don't actually do this. Although here's a guy who did, for the clicks. The Honda did impressively well, but it wasn't "fine". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyejT4VPzlE)
On older heavy equipment of low value and high difficulty servicing (think like a forklift or skid steer) it's not uncommon to replace the coolant with oil to mitigate a head gasket issue and simply drain some oil and add to the coolant on some semblance of a schedule.
One of the interesting quirks of the Honda K-series is that it spins “backwards”. If you try to mate one to a different transmission (or try to mate a different engine to a K-series transmission), it’s going to give you, uh, interesting results! Lots of people found out the hard way when they used their Fast & Furious inspiration to do JDM swaps :)
I was flabbergasted driving a 2023 Honda Civic Sport during a trip to Thailand, easily one of the best-balanced cars I’ve driven. Makes me wonder if that model is using the same engine they’re talking about here
Depends on the engine. They had an option for a turbo 1.5l l15 and a 2l k20. Plus a few others I don't know were offered in usdm. No idea about Thailand but if it wasn't a 2 liter, I think it was not a k series.
In a very niche form of motorsport, the civic sport is top in class for a lower tier Street class with the SI being top of another lower tier Street class.
Engines used in general aviation have interchangeable parts from almost 100 years ago. You could warp a Lycoming engine mechanic in from 1942 using your time traveling phone booth and he'd be able to fix your 172 of any vintage.
Yeah, but that's because general aviation engines are stuck in a time capsule from the 1940'ies, not because they are particularly good engines by today's standards. Exception being Rotax on the low end.
So what? The Rolls-Royce & Bentley L-series engine was made from 1959 to 2020, 60 years, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce–Bentley_L-series_V...), and was only replaced because of mergers and change in ownership, not because of its capacities. It of course evolved quite some during that production span.
Funny considering the K20A1 started off with a dogshit reputation and chain tensioner issues just like the F-series engines in the S2000 that honda refused to learn from.
But thanks to aftermarket support you can get third party parts to fix any issue with the K-series, and even see people turbocharging to get them north of 1,200hp. We've got a local guy with a k-swapped Acura NSX that is an absolute monster of a car.
That's a series of engines, not a single model. The FIAT FIRE [1] series has been in production for 36 years from 1985 to 2021 and, maybe you wouldn't expect it from FIAT, those engines were reliable.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fully_Integrated_Robotised_Eng...
The Jag XK platform had 45+ year run. I'd bet that as long as the 911 is made, it'll have an inline 6 and to someone's thinking it will be the same platform as the air-cooled version from 1964.
Engine architectures tend to last unless they are bad. They can do a lot on one also, the Toyota GR platform started out as a fairly vanilla V-6 but it has variations with GDI and variations with turbochargers and has been used a lot of different vehicles. A lot of different variations with different levels of compressions and such. It's basically the block and cylinders configuration.
I'll shout out the K-series though, it's a shockingly good platform. Lots of little details have been thought through, it's relatively simple, inexpensive and reliable and maybe one of the easiest engines to work on. If you were knew to cars and wanted to start wrenching, the K-series is a pretty good place to start. It can take boost and make power and has lots of aftermarket support. I know civics aren't everyones cup of tea and it's not a big V-8, but I've yet to meet an engineer that isn't at least slightly impressed by the k-series.
Came here just to rant about the FIRE and the Firefly. The Multijet was also extremely reliable.
Instead, they were tossed aside to promote whatever garbage came out of citroen design centers, i guess to achieve the destruction of stellantis. (except in south america, they still get to use the Firefly)
I counter you with a Cleon engine[0] with 42 years. ;)
But in the end an engine can be reliable but still be an environmental liability.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Cl%C3%A9on-Fonte_engin...
I’ll counter with the jaguar xk engine in production for 43 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaguar_XK_engine
I assume the American s will be by with a pushrod v8 soon.
Does it beat the Ford 302 for single displacement?
The headline isn’t really true. The K series of engines has been in production for 25 years but it has been redesigned along the way.
The article mentions this further down:
> The K20C is Honda's current-generation of the K-Series range, upgraded to deliver strong real-world efficiency and long-term reliability across the Honda and Acura catalogs. It's also a redesign that meets stricter global emissions rules and tighter thermal demands that come with modern turbocharging.
The original K20A has been out of production for a long time.
Each iteration of the engine shares a lot in common with the previous iteration, but the redesigns have been significant enough that I wouldn’t say it’s accurate to claim that one engine has been in production for 25 years.
What criteria should we use to decide if redesigns are significant enough to not claim it is the same engine?
GM/Chevrolet are still making small-block 350 engines, they started in the 1950's
https://www.gmperformancemotor.com/parts/19433032.html
I have a feeling GM is going to keep making pushrod v8's until the eventual death of the internal combustion engine.
This comment made me question the specifics of my mental model pushrod vs overhead cam engine. I found this site that has three nice gif’s which was exactly what my visual brain wanted to see for comparing the differences - https://www.samarins.com/glossary/dohc.html
Thanks for the comment as it was the impetus for me to expand my engine knowledge today!
I used to view them with disdain - a clearly obsolete design GM kept using because they're cheap or lazy or some such.
I no longer hold that view. GM's pushrod V8s are considerably smaller than their competition, and lightweight relative to their displacement, for which there is famously no replacement.
Someone will, because it's a useful form factor. And that someone is gonna be the people who are the experts in it, which is pretty strongly arguably GM.
There have been sooooo many SBCs shat out into the world in industrial applications that even if GM stops making them someone will keep making them. You can't make a compatible single replacement because you'll break a ton of applications. You can't make a ton of different replacements because that's not economical. Only makes sense to keep making them.
>Someone will, because it's a useful form factor.
Definitely, and the old carborated beasts just work and can be fixed with minimal tools and ran off of just a few wires.
I've been enjoying watching a coworker resurrect his M715 Military Truck (basically a government J-Series truck from Kaiser/Jeep) with a fresh blueprint SBC and a mix mash of GM and aftermarket drive train parts.
It may be the least efficient truck I've ever ridden in, but it can reliably pull tree stumps out of the ground.
> And that someone is gonna be the people who are the experts in it, which is pretty strongly arguably GM.
They were, at least.
Massive recall on the 6.2L versions of their V8 engines right now.
https://www.lemonfirm.com/blog/gm-6-2l-engine-recall-what-tr...
A lot of bigger engines are running right on the edge of oiling problems these days. With fuel economy rules being what they are it's just how it is. GM isn't special in this regard. Ford is killing a lot of cams and lifters (a problem GM fought through some years ago).
Meanwhile Toyota[1] is recalling blown up turbo v6s left and right (for problems that you can't just dump different oil in to solve) because they didn't invest in keeping a big v8 on the cutting like GM did and they didn't invest in making small turbo stuff last long like Ford did.
[1]Mentioned not because they have unique problems but because who if not a Toyota fanboy makes a comment like yours
I’d love to read about how emissions / fuel economy is causing the oiling problems. Any articles?
Would putting an aftermarket oil pump in these modern engines protect them or is it a deeper design issue?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbEdr6Q6cKw
They spec the thinnest stuff they can get away with to add .0001mpg. Multiply that by all the Chevy 1500s GM makes or F150s Ford makes and you see the draw.
Sometimes it turns out that the thinnest stuff they can get away with just not quite thick enough at the margins or in transient conditions. And of course they stretch out the oil change interval to reduce on-paper TCO as well which doesn't help.
You can mitigate this with thicker oil (what GM did for the recall) by can go too far and create other oiling issues because thick oil drains back slower and going to some super high spec 0-W-<whatever> Euro oil may cause other problems related to soot and sludge so there's no silver bullet.
The "safe" advice most people give out is to use whatever the <nation with no emissions or fuel economy rules> version of your owners manual says to use for oil.
And if you have a high strung turbo engine you ought to take your oil change intervals seriously.
To be fair Ford's small turbos are also notorious for shitting the bed, but mostly due to cooling system failures or the terrible choice of still running a timing belt. (1.0L Ecoboost engines)
>terrible choice of still running a timing belt. (1.0L Ecoboost engines)
3.0 Duramax says hold my beer (for the readers not familiar, it has a wet belt driving the oil pump and it's mounted in the back making proactive replacement prohibitively expensive).
My jaded take is that they're sticking with the wet belt on what's generally a europoor economy car engine in order to force planned obsolecense.
I don't think that lack of reliability is the key factor for why new motors are still being developed. Fuel efficiency or changing emission standards are two points that come to mind that drive further optimizations.
The engine series in this article (Honda K-series) has been redeveloped over its lifetime too. The original K20A was only produced for about a decade.
A bunch of engines (Toyota and Subaru come to mind) had oil sludge problems when CAFE standards changed (early 2000s) and they had to redesign.
Perhaps that's what's remarkable about these? They had architectures that could meet 2025 emissions standards, 25 years ago. That said the Honda "L" series engines are just as long-lived and are the even more efficient variety.
My favorite fact I used to tell people when I owned a 2008 Honda Fit was that parts of the L-Series engines was from Honda Powersport's Boat Motor lines. (the crankshaft if memory isn't failing me)
The Volvo modular engine is worth a short too, it ran for 26 years [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvo_Modular_Engine
25yr is "meeting expectations" for any mass market[1] engine designed after about the mid 1970s or so.
A design that is both not fundamentally flawed in some way and cutting edge enough for its time to not quickly rendered obsolete the steady increase in expectations should go far longer. A design that is "ok" and cutting edge will probably go 20-30yr. A design that is behind the times, and very good (easier to not make wrong design decisions when you're not on the cutting edge) will probably do 20-30yr as well.
[1] i.e. not some specialty truck or sports car thing that could become not worth making due to a shift in market conditions for the few segments where it's applicable.
reminds me of the LADA vs BMW meme
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fn...
When I was a kid I wanted a classic Mini with a transplanted Honda K-Series engine.
It's a big engine for that little car but I'd completely forgotten about them over the years.
It's wild that people are still doing this: https://potentialmotorsport.com/
I might have to reserect that dream. :D
The torque steer on those things is unbelievable, they are really unsafe but a lot of fun. I drove one that had 'only' 160 HP according to the owner and it was incredible. Cars like that will get you shrinkwrapped but you will be smiling...
> Cars like that will get you shrinkwrapped…
Well that's an evocative term I've not seen before, lol.
Classic Mini that meet with an bad end really do look like that, it is unfortunately very descriptive. Issigonis created an icon, and John Cooper improved substantially on it. Incidentally, one of Cooper's creations, the 'Twini' nearly killed him:
https://www.classicandsportscar.com/news/csc-features/mini-t...
I have a feeling it's one of those things, like owning a Capri 2.8i or one of the really old school 911 Turbos, that is better left to fantasy for me.
I love the idea but I'm a pretty rubbish driver and would probably end up getting myself into trouble.
...would be fun though!
I've driven a lot of weird and interesting cars but none quite that scary. It felt borderline out of control all the time and I was happy to return it to the owner with all the parts still attached.
Another interesting one - that I didn't drive but the son of the owner did - was a TR with a massive Ford special products V8 shoehorned into it. If you live in eastern Canada and you're overtaken by something small and wicked fast with 'BAD TR' as the license plate, that was it. Getting in the passenger seat of that thing was an interesting experience, the engine took up half the footwell, and the clutch had so little throw that you couldn't really tell when it was depressed and when it wasn't. It certainly moved though.
I frine of mine had one many years ago, was weird watching poeples faces as they got overtaken on the motorway by a mini doing 90mph.
The suspension wasnt really up for that.
The "Mopar 318" (Chrysler LA engine) lasted almost 40 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_LA_engine
Land Rover bought the rights to use an aluminum V8 that GM/Buick developed in 1960 and it remained in production until 2006.
True, but they wore out the casting infrastructure and probably should have stopped in 2001
Toyota 5A was in production 1987–2006, and IIRC was licensed to Chinese manufacturers afterwards. The A series as a whole lasted 1978–2006. Less modern than Honda K, but these were lovely engines. They just won't fail as long as you replace parts on time.
Just replaced the transmission on a 88 Honda motorcycle engine. China is still producing copies of it, lol. While the quality is probably not on par it's kind of amazing how long a good design can last.
I’ve noticed Honda puts an emphasis on reducing stress. I have a 20 year old Honda which still runs fine because everything about it seems “overbuilt” - other owners say it runs fine without coolant, oil, etc - just keeps plugging along.
You reminded me of a stunt/promotion I saw on TV in the 1970's where they drained the oil from a Japanese import and then ran the engine (red-lined it as I recall, perhaps a brick on the accelerator) until they blew the engine.
This was when there was a lot of grousing about those cheap (and fuel efficient!) Japanese cars catching on in the U.S. market.
Hilariously, the Japanese car just kept running and they had to intervene — maybe drain the radiator?
I wish I could find something about it but even ChatGPT comes up empty handed. Maybe it was a half-time stunt? I feel like it was in a stadium anyway.
(My first car was a used 1974 Datsun B210.)
> other owners say it runs fine without coolant, oil, etc
Um, no. Go ahead dump your oil and coolant, go drive your car, and report back how "fine" it did.
(No, please don't actually do this. Although here's a guy who did, for the clicks. The Honda did impressively well, but it wasn't "fine". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyejT4VPzlE)
Coolant sure, my RSX has a radiator leak for the past 2 years.
Oil not so much.
Just pour coolant in via the oil cap. It'll be fine. /s
On older heavy equipment of low value and high difficulty servicing (think like a forklift or skid steer) it's not uncommon to replace the coolant with oil to mitigate a head gasket issue and simply drain some oil and add to the coolant on some semblance of a schedule.
>other owners say it runs fine without coolant, oil, etc - just keeps plugging along.
This is called lying. They are lying.
Did a BAR swap of a k20a2 into a EG civic. It’s such a fun car to drive, street or track.
One of the interesting quirks of the Honda K-series is that it spins “backwards”. If you try to mate one to a different transmission (or try to mate a different engine to a K-series transmission), it’s going to give you, uh, interesting results! Lots of people found out the hard way when they used their Fast & Furious inspiration to do JDM swaps :)
You’re thinking of a couple of the older Honda series of engine. K series spin the conventional direction.
Some Diesel engines like VW 1.9 TDI PD were incredibly reliable. Still they wouldn't be legal today because of EU legislation.
I was flabbergasted driving a 2023 Honda Civic Sport during a trip to Thailand, easily one of the best-balanced cars I’ve driven. Makes me wonder if that model is using the same engine they’re talking about here
Depends on the engine. They had an option for a turbo 1.5l l15 and a 2l k20. Plus a few others I don't know were offered in usdm. No idea about Thailand but if it wasn't a 2 liter, I think it was not a k series.
In a very niche form of motorsport, the civic sport is top in class for a lower tier Street class with the SI being top of another lower tier Street class.
It could've been, but it was probably a turbocharged L-series engine.
So are the staright sixes from BMW. Running one generation behind B58.
Engines used in general aviation have interchangeable parts from almost 100 years ago. You could warp a Lycoming engine mechanic in from 1942 using your time traveling phone booth and he'd be able to fix your 172 of any vintage.
Yeah, but that's because general aviation engines are stuck in a time capsule from the 1940'ies, not because they are particularly good engines by today's standards. Exception being Rotax on the low end.
So what? The Rolls-Royce & Bentley L-series engine was made from 1959 to 2020, 60 years, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce–Bentley_L-series_V...), and was only replaced because of mergers and change in ownership, not because of its capacities. It of course evolved quite some during that production span.
Funny considering the K20A1 started off with a dogshit reputation and chain tensioner issues just like the F-series engines in the S2000 that honda refused to learn from.
But thanks to aftermarket support you can get third party parts to fix any issue with the K-series, and even see people turbocharging to get them north of 1,200hp. We've got a local guy with a k-swapped Acura NSX that is an absolute monster of a car.
Or the saab H engine, introduced in 1981 and is kicking around
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_H_engine
[flagged]
That's The Original Unedutorialed Title Copy And Paste...
just sayin'...
Fair Enough