3 Of The Worst V8 Engines Ever Made

I've been testing, reviewing, and writing about cars for over a decade and I can confidently say that many of my favorite engines are V8s. While they might not be the most efficient powertrains on the market, many modern V8s offer big levels of power for exciting acceleration — especially when paired with turbochargers or a supercharger. The first muscle cars were powered by iconic V8s. Lots of classic V8s have evocative sounds and distinct rumbles that set them apart in a crowd — that's also part of the recipe that makes an engine great. Whether they're using a cross-plane crankshaft or a flat-plane crankshaft, V8s offer a unique soundtrack that can be entertaining for me as a test-driver or, of course, for owners and bystanders.

If there's any engine that most accurately represents American automotive manufacturing, it's probably the V8, but many manufacturers from around the world have embraced it. Unfortunately, not all eight-cylinder engines are created equal. Some of the engines I've come across while testing and writing have been downright disappointing. Some lack power, while others have offered little to no sound or sensation that set them apart from smaller, more-efficient engines. So which engines are the least memorable? Which ones provide the proper cylinder count without the requisite enthusiasm? All the inefficiency, but none of the power? Let's take a look.

I had the misfortune of driving a 1983 Oldsmobile Delta 88 when I was in high school, and while I loved the freedom it provided, it was objectively a terrible car. Inefficient, woeful driving dynamics, and ugly to boot. Thankfully, mine came with the 5.0-liter gasoline-powered V8, which was an utterly underwhelming engine that couldn't keep up with any of my friend's Honda Civics or Nissan Sentras, but at least it wasn't the 5.7-liter diesel V8.

The 5.7-liter diesel V8 that was available in the Delta 88 was built in the late 1970s and early 1980s with cost-savings in mind, and lots of corners were cut. Problems like corroded fuel injector pumps, head gasket leaks, and leaky oil pans were persistent. Problems were so bad with the diesel V8, that General Motors took them out of all passenger vehicles by 1985. Not to mention, it was pretty gutless. When it first debuted in the 1970s, the 5.7-liter V8 made 120 horsepower –not exactly an exciting amount. In the early 1980s, the diesel engine had been detuned to put out just 105 horsepower –an abysmal number for any V8.

Known not just as a bad V8, but as one of the worst engines ever put in a production vehicle, the Triumph V8 is actually two four-cylinder engines combined into one eight-cylinder letdown. Triumph, a British car company that went under in 1984, was building some pretty peppy four-cylinder cars in the 1960s, but they wanted to put more power under the hood. Originally, they thought of bringing a six-cylinder engine to market, but settled on the V8 instead.

During development, there were all sorts of problems related to the engine's size, power, and especially cooling. The increase in engine bore size meant the elimination of coolant passages during the build process. Engine hardware like the main bearings, the timing chain, and the cylinder heads all had reliability issues. Couple that with design flaws like the poorly-located water pump, and you had an engine that was essentially a ticking time bomb. The V8 wasn't entirely underwhelming when it came to power, but it was certainly a powerplant to avoid if you wanted something reliable.

An early attempt at cylinder deactivation, the Cadillac 8-6-4 (also known as V8-6-4 or the L62) was ahead of its time, but that doesn't make it any better. It was a large 6.0-liter V8 equipped to every Cadillac model in 1981, and it was designed to deactivate certain cylinders, depending on how it was being driven, in order to improve fuel economy. During some scenarios, two cylinders would shut down, leaving you with a V6 engine. In other scenarios, four cylinders would shut down, leaving the driver with just four cylinders — effectively a V4. It's a good idea in theory, but in practice, it wasn't well-executed. 

When the engine would deactivate cylinders, changes between these settings had big hesitations as the on-board computer trying to control these changes struggled to keep up. Certain parts of the 8-6-4 system couldn't respond quick enough to driver inputs, and the result was an engine that sometimes felt like it was unsuccessfully searching for the right gear on a regular basis. After 13 software updates in just one year, Cadillac pulled the L62 from production and a 4.1-liter V8 was called in to replace it.