Despite the economic turmoil of the Great Depression, America’s luxury automakers spent much of the 1930s fighting a multi-cylinder arms race. Packard revived the Twin Six name in 1932 before renaming its flagship the Packard Twelve, which remained in production through 1938. Lincoln also embraced V12 power, while Pierce-Arrow entered the twelve-cylinder market in 1931 and stayed there until the company closed in 1938. Auburn introduced its own V12 in 1932 and continued offering twelve-cylinder models through 1934.
Franklin took perhaps the strangest route of all. The Syracuse automaker, already famous for air-cooled engines, introduced an air-cooled 6.8-liter V12 late in 1932. Rated at roughly 150 horsepower, it was unlike anything else in the American luxury market. The engine gave Franklin a technological talking point at exactly the moment the company needed one most, but it could not reverse collapsing finances. Franklin shut down automobile production in 1934 after more than three decades in business.
These engines were about more than top speed. Twelve cylinders promised smoother power delivery, quieter operation and the kind of mechanical prestige wealthy buyers expected from the most expensive cars in America. Automakers were selling refinement as much as performance. The irony was that they were pouring engineering resources into ever more elaborate engines just as the pool of buyers who could afford such cars was shrinking dramatically.
Cadillac and Marmon Went Even Further
Cadillac escalated the battle in 1930 with its V-16, a 452-cubic-inch flagship designed to move enormous coachbuilt bodies with almost effortless smoothness. The engine produced roughly 165 horsepower, but its real appeal was refinement. Cadillac’s sixteen-cylinder cars were among the most prestigious automobiles in the world, and the company managed to keep the V-16 in production through 1940 despite the Depression.
Marmon answered in 1931 with its own sixteen-cylinder model. Its 491-cubic-inch engine used extensive aluminum construction and produced around 200 horsepower, giving the car a better power-to-weight ratio than many of its rivals. The Marmon Sixteen was an extraordinary technical achievement, but engineering brilliance could not overcome the economics of the era. Only a few hundred were built before Marmon’s passenger-car business collapsed.
Peerless also developed a V16 in an attempt to return to the top tier of American luxury. Only one complete prototype was finished before the company abandoned automobile production. By that point, the cylinder wars had reached an almost surreal stage. Some of America’s most prestigious manufacturers were adding cylinders in pursuit of status just as the market itself was disappearing beneath them.
Europe Used More Cylinders to Chase Speed
In Europe, multi-cylinder engineering often served a different purpose. Bugatti, Maserati, Auto Union and Alfa Romeo experimented with sixteen-cylinder engines primarily in racing and high-speed competition rather than in large luxury sedans. Maserati’s Tipo V4 joined two straight-eight engines into a sixteen-cylinder powerplant, while Bugatti experimented with similarly exotic arrangements as manufacturers searched for more power.
Auto Union produced the most famous European V16s of the decade. Its mid-engine Grand Prix cars, developed with Ferdinand Porsche’s involvement, used supercharged V16 engines that grew increasingly powerful through the 1930s. By the Type C era, output exceeded 500 horsepower, giving drivers such as Bernd Rosemeyer extraordinary speed on circuits and record courses. These cars helped define the technological excess of prewar European racing.
Alfa Romeo also entered the sixteen-cylinder race late in the decade, although the outbreak of war cut those efforts short. By then, the pattern was clear. In America, V12s and V16s represented silence, luxury and prestige. In Europe, the same cylinder counts often represented speed, competition and engineering bravado. The Depression, corporate failures and World War II brought the era to a close, but for a brief moment, more cylinders meant more status, more power and more ambition.
