Engine Question

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Condraz23

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Hey everyone.

I've seen engines that are more expensive than cars and I know that Ferrari engines exceed $20,000.00 in price alone. What's so hard about building an engine that makes 900HP compared to one that makes 90HP? Aren't engines just an assortment of cogs, levers, pistons, and valves? What justifies the enormous cost of producing a powerful engine, apart from raw materials alone, when they are both produced in a factory?
 
A Ferrari engine is a Ferrari engine and you are paying, in part, for the name.

Most engines are mass produced using parts that are strong enough to resist the pressures that its power creates. A more powerful engine needs stronger, more expensive parts, so the whole engine costs more. More powerful engines also tend to use more exotic materials (for lightness/strength), which cost more yet again.
 
They are built using different materials for one thing, different parts of an engine can be made with cheaper metals, lighter alloys, tougher alloys ect, that will effect price. Secondly you have the electronics side of things, a lot of engines particularly performance engines have sophisticated systems managing the engines which has to be implemented into the engine design as well as actually making and programming the ECU it'self. Also you have fine tuning, the more powerful an engine is the more stress the engine will undergo, so you may have to spend a lot more time tesing the engines for weaknesses, making sure they'll last ect. Take the Bugatti Veyron engine for example, 1001bhp, 8 liters and 16 cylinders. Anyone can make an engine that big with that power, but the complications come in when you consider that the Veyron is protected under VAG's standard warranty which means it has to be just as reliable as a VW Golf, Audi A2 or Seat Ibiza. Then you have the way the engines are built, some engines are more machine built than others, some are almost completley hand built. Hand built engines require more expertise and the people that build the engines need paying.
 
Thanks for the quick replies.

Assuming that each individual engine does not get tested, is it mostly due to the manufacturing costs of stronger materials and advanced electronics?
 
Each individual engine doesn't get tested that much in relation to the development engines, alot of the cost goes into R&D. Engines like Ferraris current V12 and VAG's W16 no doubt cost a lot more in the R&D phase than the Chevy small block or the Rover K-Series or Ford Ecotech ever did. There's is a premium for the badge ofcourse but the engines themselves will cost more to manufacture and develop as well.
 
Like daan and L4S said, to add more reasons,

Most performance engines are not built in the quantity as economy/mass produced engines, increasing cost.
Many performance engines are also hand built for exclusivity and tight tolerances for reliability, many exotic engines are engineered to be pleasing on the eyes by removing casting marks aswell as polishing/chroming/coating much of the engine. Then you also have the exclusivity price of a exotic engine which will add to the price.

Many many reasons for the increased price.


Here is an example of the effort put into engine presentation, a Ferrari F430 V8

f430engine.jpg
 
Well, as most people noted there is the simple fact that it is a Ferrari engine, and that they spend a lot of time developing them to be race-ready for the street. That said, so do companies like General Motors and Ford, but often times they "cut corners" by using designs that are tried-and-true, therefore eliminating overall development costs.

...Considering that you yourself could drive to your local Chevrolet Dealer here in the US and pick up the Z06's LS7 for about $15K, that is quite impressive. They are all built by hand just outside of Detroit, and given that they are often turn-key setups, you have a 505 BHP monster ready to go in any project you can cram the engine into.

If you want to be on a budget, GM will sell you a nice turn-key 350ci crate engine for less than $4000 that will put down over 300 BHP, in which simple modifications can easily push that number to nearly 400 BHP. But thats because they have been building essentially the same engine (well, small-block design anyway) for 51 years now, and they are indeed a dime-a-dozen these days.

...Ford does much the same as well. You can pick up the current Mustang's 4.6L 300 BHP setup for just a bit shy of $7000, or if you want to go old school and get some extra power, 302ci V8s will put down well over 300 BHP for a little more than $5000.

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What it comes down to is that atleast for American engines, they are too "common" to cost as much as they do for a Ferrari or Lamborghni. Development costs are low, production costs are extremely low, and thus the savings are passed onto the consumer who have been buying these engines for decades.
 
All good sound reasons, one more comes to mind. The cost of some parts are also tied up in the engineering processes used to make them.

Pistons, for example, are cheap if they're cast. But they're also weak. Forged pistons are much stronger, but the tooling required to make them is FAR more expensive, and the process of forging is also fairly pricey.

A new(ish) cost involved mowadays is surface coatings. Many internal parts are given friction reducing coatings in high performance engines. One popular one is the use of a material called DLC (Diamond-like Carbon) on piston rings.

Added to the initial manufacturing, the more final machining a component needs, especially to tighter tolerances, the more money it will cost. Accurate machining will liberate power through losing friction, and increasing efficiency.
 

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