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Ward's Ten Best Engines

Welcome to the eighth annual installment of the Ward's 10 Best Engines awards. Our list of the year's best engines remains the auto industry's only “best of” list to concentrate solely on the engine, what we consider to be any vehicle's single most important collection of components.

In eight years, the 10 Best Engines competition has never lacked for controversial choices and dissent from losers and winners alike. But the awards continue as the single most influential engine-development barometer for auto makers, suppliers and yes, even consumers. We are gratified that auto makers — and the suppliers with whom they cooperate in powertrain development — covet a 10 Best Engines award, just as we are gratified that the awards have achieved the credibility necessary to achieve the former.

For 2002, nothing about our few 10 Best Engines rules has changed. All engines compete on equal footing. Small-displacement 4-cyl. engines, potentially hamstrung because they typically lack the amount of pleasing horsepower and torque common to larger engines, nonetheless must earn a winning place among the smooth and powerful multi-cylinder powerplants. That they do indeed win is testimony to the numerous other attributes Ward's Best Engines judges evaluate for each engine.

We toyed with raising the price ceiling for this year's entries, but Ward's editors believe there will continue to be downward price pressures in all sectors of the economy — thus to remain eligible for a Best Engines award, engines must be in vehicles with a base price of no more than $50,000.

Finally, eligible engines must be fitted in regular-production vehicles, sold at franchised dealerships, during the 2001 calendar year.

Here are the winners:

• BMW AG
  3L DOHC I-6
• BMW AG
  3.2L DOHC I-6
• DaimlerChrysler AG
  Mercedes 5L SOHC V-8
• Ford Motor Co.
  5.4L/5.4L supercharged SOHC V-8
• General Motors Corp.
  4.2L DOHC I-6
• General Motors Corp.
  6.6L Duramax OHV V-8
• Honda Motor Co. Ltd.
  2L DOHC I-4
• Nissan Motor Co. Ltd.
  3.5L DOHC V-6
• Porsche AG
  2.7L DOHC H-6
• Volkswagen AG
  1.8L turbocharged DOHC I-4

Fact is, BMW has placed on our 10 Best Engines list in some form or another of its revered inline 6-cyl. layout since the competition's inception in 1995.

You don't need us to recite BMW's credentials as the industry's crown prince of straight sixes, but it's nonetheless instructive to consider how carefully the company with “Motor” in its title nurtures its gloriously refined brood.

For a fleeting moment in the new century, we'd worried that BMW — distracted by dalliances like the star-crossed Rover Group purchase and the subsequent forays into front-wheel-drive cars and V-6 engines that came with the Rover package — had lost its focus. Its straight sixes still were velvet-smooth and willing, but any number of lesser-priced (and lesser-badged) 6-cyl. competitors, both inline and vee, were surpassing the Bavarians' horsepower exertions — by an alarming margin. In fact, in 2000, we opted to award a Best Engines win to BMW's 2.5L I-6 rather than the 2.8L version favored by most critics, because we thought the 2.8L's 193 hp was beginning to look too meager in relation to the competition.

Not to worry, though, as BMW merely stutter-stepped before bolting for the finish line. For model-year 2001, BMW strapped on its excellent double VANOS infinitely variable valve timing system for the 2.5L engine and added a displacement bump in addition to VANOS 3L for the outgoing 2.8L variant. The already buttery 2.8L's horsepower and torque both jumped back into a range that not only is highly competitive but firmly in the range of what we'd call “healthy” at a rock-solid 75 hp per liter.

This year, Ward's judges were entranced by all the expected NVH virtues, combined with an amusingly muscular midrange that was missing before double-VANOS. And in the 330 Ci application, there was an intoxicating basso exhaust note when dipping into the throttle, particularly at low speeds, that cemented the experience. Our only complaint is that the new engine places expectations so high that you're sometimes disappointed by the low 6,000-rpm redline and a slight dropoff of “pull” in the upper rev range.

Many argue that BMW gets premium money for its iron, but there's no arguing that the 3L DOHC I-6 is a premium engine (the cylinder liners are the only meaningful “iron” in it, incidentally). The 330 Ci coupe we tested was pure sculpture and trimmed out at not quite $39,000, which for the record we find quite reasonable. But that awesome straight-six makes any 3-Series a bargain.

BMW AG
3.2L DOHC I-6

Okay, here's an easy one. Take all the superlatives you find in the previous glowing write-up of BMW's 3L inline 6-cyl. — all the talk of sparkling NVH and beautiful balance and heraldic exhaust-pipe trumpeting. Then add, oh, just another 97 hp.

And 0-to-60 mph (97 km/h) in 5 seconds.

And the ‘I'll-take-two-of-'em’ price of $46,900.

That spells WINNER in our book. And if you're saying, “Well, who the hell wouldn't go for the marvelous M3 mill, because everybody knows serious money buys serious stuff,” listen here: BMW was asking pretty much the same money last year for the M3, and we did not — repeat, did not — vote its 3.2L inline-six one of last year's 10 Best Engines.

That was for a couple of reasons. Mainly because we knew that Europe and other markets were getting the “real” M3 engine: the one making a rollicking 320 hp from 3.2L. Second, some testers found last year's M3 engine lacking in the area of low-speed driveability and thought its throttle tip-in too fussy. In short, we believed the well-rounded “standard” 3L engine, just 15 hp shy of the '01 M3 unit's 240 hp, was a better everyday companion.

Obviously, those misgivings about last year's M3 engine (internally coded S52) have been eradicated. As quickly, it should be said, as your right foot can snap open the six individual throttle butterflies, one of the we're-really-serious-now little toys that make the 2002 M3 3.2L engine (S54) something genuinely special.

Things getting a little humdrum around the house? Get in the M3 and jab the button for the “M Driving Dynamics Control.” This engages a “sport” setting for opening those six throttle bodies; just like that, you've altered the throttles' fully electronic control, quickening the ratio of their activation in relation to your movement of the throttle pedal. It's an amazing engine management trick. And it's not just to put another button on the dash: the S54's already brainwave-quick throttle action becomes sharper than a fresh-out-of-the-factory Wusthof. Outstanding fun!

You might want to pooh-pooh the M3 engine's iron block, as we're wont to do. But you wouldn't be taking into account that the M3 inline 6-cyl., when approaching its 7,900-rpm power peak, is developing piston speeds comparable to those in a Formula One engine. So shut up and be thankful for the iron encapsulation necessary to keep where they belong pistons traveling at 72 feet per second.

Other factors that contribute to the S54's 333 hp — that's an astonishing specific output of 103 hp/L — are a widening of the double VANOS variability range, a unique design to reduce valvetrain mass and a no-nonsense 11.5:1 compression ratio.

End result: Out-of-this-world thrust — anywhere, we mean ANYWHERE, in the M3's expansive rev range — and remarkable civility when required. This is one serious engine.

by Bill Visnic
Ward's Auto World
January 1, 2002
courtesy WardsAuto.com