The S series is a

straight-4 A straight-four engine (also called an inline-four) is a four-cylinder piston engine where cylinders are arranged in a line along a common crankshaft. The vast majority of automotive four-cylinder engines use a straight-four layout (with the ...

SOHC An overhead camshaft (OHC) engine is a piston engine where the camshaft is located in the cylinder head above the combustion chamber. This contrasts with earlier overhead valve engines (OHV), where the camshaft is located below the combustion cha ...

internal combustion engine An internal combustion engine (ICE or IC engine) is a heat engine in which the combustion of a fuel occurs with an oxidizer (usually air) in a combustion chamber that is an integral part of the working fluid flow circuit. In an internal combus ...

developed by the

Austin Rover Group The Austin Rover Group (abbreviated ARG) was a British motor manufacturer. It was created in 1982 as the mass-market car manufacturing subsidiary of British Leyland (BL). Previously, this entity had been known as BL Cars Ltd (formerly Leyland C ...

(subsidiary of

British Leyland British Leyland was an automotive engineering and manufacturing conglomerate formed in the United Kingdom in 1968 as British Leyland Motor Corporation Ltd (BLMC), following the merger of Leyland Motors and British Motor Holdings. It was partl ...

), and produced from 1984 until 1993. The engine was used in the

Austin Montego The Austin Montego is a British family car that was produced by British Leyland from 1984 until 1988, and then by Rover Group from 1988 until 1995. The Montego was the replacement for both the rear-wheel drive Morris Ital and the front-wheel dri ...

, Mark 1 Rover 200-series and the

MG Maestro MG, Mg, or mg and variants may refer to: Organizations * MG Cars, an automotive marque of the now defunct MG Car Company * MG Motor, a present-day car manufacturing company * MG JW Automobile, a Pakistani automobile manufacturer * Champion Air (I ...

. The engine was used in the

Austin Maestro The Austin Maestro is a five-door hatchback small family car (and two-door van derivative) that was produced from 1982 to 1987 by British Leyland, and from 1988 until 1994 by Rover Group, as a replacement for the Morris Marina and Austin Alleg ...

from 1985 onwards.

Description

The engine comes from the same lineage as the BMC-developed

E-series E series may refer to: * BMC E-series engine, a series of automobile engines * Electronic E series of preferred numbers, a series of preferred values for electronic components such as resistors, capacitors, inductors, zener diodes * Entwicklung seri ...

family introduced in the 1969

Austin Maxi The Austin Maxi is a medium-sized, 5-door hatchback family car that was produced by Austin and later British Leyland between 1969 and 1981. It was the first British five-door hatchback. British Leyland built and sold the Maxi alongside the 1971 ...

, but with important modifications in order to facilitate compatibility with a conventional "end-on"

transmission Transmission may refer to: Medicine, science and technology * Power transmission ** Electric power transmission ** Propulsion transmission, technology allowing controlled application of power *** Automatic transmission *** Manual transmission *** ...

unit, in place of BMC/BL's traditional "gearbox-in-sump" configuration for its

front wheel drive Front-wheel drive (FWD) is a form of engine and transmission layout used in motor vehicles, where the engine drives the front wheels only. Most modern front-wheel drive vehicles feature a transverse engine, rather than the conventional lon ...

vehicles. The gearbox flange was redesigned to accept either a

Volkswagen Volkswagen (),English: , . abbreviated as VW (), is a German Automotive industry, motor vehicle manufacturer headquartered in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1937 by the German Labour Front under the Nazi Party and revived into a ...

manual gearbox (for the Maestro/Montego), or the PG-1 transmission (for the Rover 200). The S-Series was produced in a single capacity of 1.6 litres (1,598cc) as the smaller and larger capacity requirements were already served by the 1.3-litre A-series/ Honda EV engines and the 2.0-litre O-series engines respectively. Fuelling was by means of a single carburettor in most applications, and electronic fuel injection for the higher-specification variants of the Rover 216 producing peak power of . BL had also developed the earlier

R-series ''R series'' * Adventure R series – paramotors for gliders * BL R-series engine – gasoline car engines * Dennis R series – coach chassis * Ford R series – busses * International Harvester R series – trucks * Mack R series – heavy-dut ...

engine from the E-series family, but largely as a stopgap at the Maestro's launch since the S series was not yet ready for production. Because the E series had to be turned through 180 degrees in order to facilitate an end-on transmission, the resultant R-series unit had the inlet manifold on the front-facing side of the

cylinder head In an internal combustion engine, the cylinder head (often abbreviated to simply "head") sits above the cylinders and forms the roof of the combustion chamber. In sidevalve engines, the head is a simple sheet of metal; whereas in more modern ov ...

, something which proved fatal for the engine's reliability—since it opened the door for

carburettor A carburetor (also spelled carburettor) is a device used by an internal combustion engine to control and mix air and fuel entering the engine. The primary method of adding fuel to the intake air is through the venturi tube in the main meterin ...

icing. The S series solved this problem, as the inlet manifold was now on the rear face of the engine. Another important advance over the E/R series was the adoption of a camshaft driven by a toothed belt in place of the previous timing chain system.

History

Production of the S-series engine continued until the end of Montego / Maestro series production in 1993, the remaining cars which were built by Rover until 1994 used only the Rover MDi/Perkins Prima

diesel engine The diesel engine, named after Rudolf Diesel, is an internal combustion engine in which ignition of the fuel is caused by the elevated temperature of the air in the cylinder due to mechanical compression; thus, the diesel engine is a so-call ...

, which was based on the O-series. A 4-valve version of the S series was under development alongside the 1100 cc and 1400 cc K-series engines. However, the project was abandoned when a redesign of the K series allowed its capacity to be stretched to 1600 cc and 1800 cc. The engine was given the name L16 but should not be confused with the L Series diesel engines or Datsun/Nissan L16 engine.

References

{{Reflist S Gasoline engines by model Straight-four engines