Discovery Channel Magazine: Inside the engine

Discovery Channel Magazine, February 2011

Imagine the pitch: Karl Benz on one side, a group of industrial executives on the other. “I have invented an engine, which when attached to a chassis will create a whole new vehicle called the car,” says Benz. “It will bring you freedom and prestige, will open new horizons to you and your family, and in future will transport you at speeds as high as a hundred miles an hour. All you have to do is fill it with petrol and maintain it with a little oil.” I see, Benz; and how do you propose to separate these contraptions as they move at such speed on opposite sides of the same highway? “We thought a broken white line might do the trick.”

Whatever Benz said, it worked, and a century and a quarter later DCM is standing in a cavernous UMW Toyota assembly plant in Shah Alam, Malaysia, looking at where that pitch has taken us today. Kawasaki robot arms make jagged, purposeful sweeps as they weld frames together, and showers of sparks fill the air. The room, like an aircraft hanger, is a cacophony of competing sounds: the bangs and hisses of construction and pneumatics, the constant chimes – like children’s toys – of alerts at different points on the assembly line. A cluster of engine blocks waits to be bolted onto transmissions and front suspensions, then hoisted and fixed into car shells on hangers in the air, where special sensors will make sure the bolts are tightened just the right amount. Every few metres the shell looks more like a car: a headlight here, an exhaust pipe there, until the boxes of parts at one end of the factory have become a sleek, gleaming car at the other, ready for testing. 67,000 Toyotas – from Hiace vans to Innova multi-purpose vehicles and Vios cars – rolled off this line last year; 300 will go through today alone.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Toyota alone built 7.17 million vehicles in its 2011 financial year, and sold more. According to Organisation Internationale des Constructeurs d’Automobiles (OICA), a global voice on the automotive industry, almost 78 million vehicles, and over 58 million cars, were produced in 2010; China alone contributed 18.2 million vehicles.

Benz and his peers started a process that has totally reshaped our world. There are plenty of bad things we can pin on the engine and the car: congestion; pollution; Jeremy Clarkson. But on the credit side of the ledger are freedom of movement and communication, ease of everyday life, and the sheer joy that many people take from the craftsmanship and engineering of a good car and engine.

Under the bonnet

The humble engine has taken on a complex evolution since its early days, yet the basic principle of the four stroke engine is much the same as it was a century ago. Engines are made up of cylinders with pistons that move up and down within them, and the four strokes refer to what happens within those cylinders. One, the fuel mixture goes into the cylinder; two, it’s compressed, as the piston goes up; three, the compression and the spark plug ignite the fuel, creating energy which pushes the piston down and is then transmitted through a crankshaft to turn the wheels; and four, what’s left is removed as exhaust. Right now, millions of car engines around the world are completing those four strokes over and over again, many times per second.

So if you take a look at the motorwagen, widely considered the first commercial car (Benz built it in 1885, patented it the following year and made the first public sale in 1888), you might think it has nothing in common with the streamlined, high-power cars we’re watching come off the assembly line today. It has huge, spoked wheels like a penny farthing bicycle; it has no cover for the driver, whose position is more like on a stagecoach. But look at the important bit – the engine – and you’d be surprised. There’s a radiator to cool the engine, an accelerator to control it, a spark plug to ignite it, and a clutch. And other familiar innovations swiftly followed: Benz’s rival and later partner, Daimler, put out a car called the 35HP in 1901 which put the driver behind the engine instead of above it, with a four-cylinder engine like you might find in most standard cars today, under a bonnet (hood), on a pressed steel chassis. Oh, and if the name 35HP doesn’t ring a bell, maybe you know it by its other name, inspired by the daughter of a big buyer of Daimler’s new cars. Her name was Mercedes.

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