A V5 engine is a five-cylinder

piston engine A reciprocating engine, more often known as a piston engine, is a heat engine that uses one or more Reciprocating motion, reciprocating pistons to convert high temperature and high pressure into a Circular motion, rotating motion. This article ...

where the cylinders share a common crankshaft and are arranged in a V configuration. Even compared to the fairly rare straight-five engine, V5 engine designs are very uncommon. The first production V5 was the 1997–2007 Volkswagen Group VR5 engine. It is arguably not a true V5 engine, as all the cylinders share a single cylinder head. However,

Honda commonly known as just Honda, is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate automotive manufacturer headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Founded in October 1946 by Soichiro Honda, Honda has bee ...

produced a true V5 motorcycle racing engine, used in the RC211V.

Automobiles

General Motors

In the early 1980s, Oldsmobile developed a prototype V5 diesel engine, however it never reached production stages and the project was subsequently abandoned. The engine is based on the Oldsmobile V6 diesel engine with the fuel injection pump in the location of the "missing" sixth cylinder. A prototype engine is on display at the RE Olds Museum in Lansing, Michigan.

Volkswagen Group

The only V5 automobile engine to reach production was the "VR5" engine manufactured by Volkswagen from 1997 to 2006. Based on Volkswagen's

VR6 engine The VR6 engine is a six-cylinder engine configuration developed by Volkswagen. The name VR6 comes from the combination of German words "Verkürzt" and "Reihenmotor" meaning "shortened inline engine" referring to the VR-engine having characteristi ...

, the VR5 was a narrow-angle engine with staggered cylinders (three cylinders on one bank and two on the other) sharing a single cylinder head. As per the VR6 engine, the angle between the banks was 15 degrees. Initial versions used 2 valves per cylinder, however, an update in 2000 resulted in a total of 4 valves per cylinder and the addition of

variable valve timing Variable valve timing (VVT) is the process of altering the timing of a Poppet valve, valve lift event in an internal combustion engine, and is often used to improve performance, fuel economy or emissions. It is increasingly being used in combina ...

Motorcycles

Honda

The Honda RC211V, a MotoGP racing motorcycle which competed in the 2002–2006 seasons, used a V5 engine. The transversely-mounted engine had three cylinders at the front, two cylinders at the rear and a V-angle of 75.5 degrees. The engine used 4 valves per cylinder.

BSA

In the last days of the BSA motorcycle manufacturer, the

factory A factory, manufacturing plant or production plant is an industrial facility, often a complex consisting of several buildings filled with machinery, where workers manufacture items or operate machines which process each item into another. Th ...

design team produced plans for a modular range of four engines, all using a 200 cc cylinder. (It was planned to increase the cylinder capacity to up to 250 cc in due course). The range, which never went further than the drawing board, comprised: * 200 cc single * 400 cc parallel twin * 600 cc triple * 1,000 cc V5 muscle bike (The company avoided the perhaps obvious 800 cc straight-four option, to avoid direct competition with the major Japanese factories that already dominated the market with such machines). "Bike" magazine (issue date to follow)

References

V5 engines 5 {{automotive-part-stub