These formidable engines, our six Best Engines evaluators believe, are — or, for repeat winners, remain — benchmark executions of engine design, innovation, manufacturing. They excel in a business that holds their "contribution" to the overall product in the highest regard and stand proud of the conventional.

For 2001’s installment, nothing about the Best Engines contest has changed. Each engine nominated by our six editors must stand up to every other nominated engine in a battle unsullied by the marketing-happy "category competition" that so devalues other industry awards. We don’t "sell" the Best Engines to anybody. These engines have to sell themselves to us.

Nominations are fettered by a few simple rules. The engine must be available in a regular-production vehicle available for sale in the current calendar or model year (i.e. no 2002-model engines can be tested in the 2000 calendar year). And the engine must be fitted in a passenger vehicle with a total "base" price of no more than $50,000; this includes all applicable costs such as gas-guzzler taxes, but excludes the increasingly annoying "delivery" charge.

We’ll warn longtime readers now: the time-honored 50-grand "cap" — which has held steady since the first Best Engines competition in 1995! — likely will increase next year. Never mind that the cost-cap has claimed its first true casualty, the brilliant Porsche Boxster S (a Best Engines winner last year that, by rule, would have automatically been nominated this year), by a piddling $200. No, we believe that if sales in calendar-2001 remain robust — that is, buyers continue to pay $40,000-plus for leaf spring-equipped SUVs — then we have to assume $50,000 no longer is enough to guarantee fitment of an outstanding engine.

Enjoy 2001’s 10 Best Engines. This year’s list represents the most "turnover" in the history of the award, and we think you’ll find some genuine surprises among the annointed.

Not that there was anything wrong with BMW AG’s "old" 2.8L DOHC I-6. Just the contrary, as the now-defunct 2.8L unit was perhaps the industry’s ultimate refinement of the inline 6-cyl. format.

But when it comes to engines, BMW can interpret the jungle drums better than anybody, and it could smell the competition closing in, circling: If BMW holds a unique — we say "hallowed" — position as the eminent employer of the I-6 layout, the competition could at least begin to chip away at that with better horsepower than Bavarians offer.

In fact, in last year’s "summation" of BMW’s 193-hp 2.8L I-6, we said: "190 hp ain’t enough anymore — even from BMW." We had an eye on any number of V-6s that produce substantially more power and torque — and the wonderful refinement of inline sixes only goes so far in the ever-escalating realm of powertrain competition.

So BMW made haste with a 3L version of the 2.8L engine for the ’01 model year. In the blur of a torque-enhancing stroke increase, BMW makes sure that its inline reigns supreme.

The new engine boasts a stroke of 89.6 mm, versus the previous 84 mm. The extra fifth of a liter of displacement that results, though, is hardly as inconsequential as the numbers might suggest, and the new 3L unit enjoys a serious fettling of camshaft profile, intake manifold and exhaust port shapes. What’s delivered is a hefty 32-hp increase over the 2.8L’s 193 hp and 8 more lb.-ft. (11 Nm) of torque.

Okay, that slight amount of torque hardly seems worth mentioning, but on the road, the effect is astonishing, as this new engine takes up from low rpm in a broad-shouldered manner the old 2.8L just couldn’t muster. And the double-VANOS infinitely variable valve timing assures there’s almost always a bootful of power at your disposal.