rev up your engines, today I'm gonna answer Willie Z's question, who makes the
best v6 engines these days, v6s really became popular in the last couple of
decades because, they're smaller than a v8, they'll fit in front-wheel drive
vehicles easier, and with modern technology in both metallurgy and
electronics, they can put out insane horsepower too, but sometimes that insane
horsepower is just that it's insane, you really don't even need 450 horsepower to
be driving around in you know let's face it,
so today I'm talking about what the best v6 engine is, I'm not just
talking about pure power, I'm talking about what is the best engine in terms
of reliability, smoothness, power too, but a
combination of them, how long is it going to last, how smooth it is, and does it
have really good acceleration, and of course I'm not going to be talking about
exotic v6 engines either, you know Porsche even a while back started using
v6 engines instead of their boxer fours they went to v6 in their SUVs that they
were making, I'm not going to talk about any of those engines, they're too exotic,
they're very expensive, they have lots of problems, I'm talking about cars that
average people are going to drive that they want to run great, lasts a long time,
have good power and get decent gas mileage, now over the course of time the
GM 3800 v6 engine was actually a really good engine, I know everybody says Oh
Scotty doesn't like GM, well those are actually good engines, now the vehicles
that they were attached to often weren't all that great, the transmissions
especially the front wheel drive ones had a problem of burning out from the
engine and too much power for the weak transmission, but those 3,800 were pretty
reliable v6 engine, and Nissan has been making pretty reliable v6 engines for a
while well since Renault took over their quality
has been going down, but take like a 2002 Nissan Maxima, hey that Maxima v6
it put out 250 horsepower which is 40 more than a 2002 Lexus 300, so really they
were pretty powerful engines and they were relatively reliable, I had customers
with them they got a lot of miles out of those maxima v6's, now people are
always asking me about Kia's, saying oh you know are Kia's reliable cars well
yeah originally they were pretty puddle jumpy cars that fell apart
as you drove down the road, now they're better made than they were, but even so
they're v6 engines have had problems over time, originally they were just basically
Mitsubishi v6 engines, they took the design from them, a lot of the parts are
totally interchangeable, so I am NOT a fan of Korean v6 engines, they can put out
power but over time they don't hold up, a lot of them especially the ones that
have the mitsubishi style engines in them, they were good for maybe a hundred
thousand miles, then the internals would start to come apart and you'd have to
rebuild them because they were just using cheap bearings, cheap piston rings they
were just making them to low quality, i saw some of those kia v6 engines
break down and just stop running at 45 or 50,000 miles, which is really kind of
unheard of for any kind of japanese car, you know they're known for reliability
but the korean ones not so much, now if we get to Ford, as I said you can get
a raptor that's got a souped-up v6 that puts out 450 horsepower, now you have to
realize that sometimes people go a little bit too far with these sixes, if
you throw in gasoline direct injection where you have thousands of psi pressure
from the fuel injectors, and twin turbochargers, that's going to strain any
v6 engine quite a bit, and of course over time it's just gonna wear out faster
there's always somewhat of a price to pay for power, you want an insane power
generally you're gonna get worse gas mileage, the engine strained it's gonna
wear out faster, that's just the way it is, and I know people get caught up in
these horsepower Wars of the more horsepower the better, but this video is
about reliability, smoothness, power and decent gas mileage, so my choice for who
makes the best v6 engine in the world is the Lexus Toyota v6 engines
okay this Lexus v6 it's 17 years old, the engine doesn't burn oil
it still run smooth the silk, has plenty of power and at least on the highway it
gets decent gas mileage, it's an old car but it still gets 29 miles a gallon on
the highway, and though it's 17 years old the engine has never been touched these things
are made, I have had customers with 350 thousand miles on these things and
they're still running strong, now this is a 1m z fe engine, the modern lexus use
what's called the 2 gr engine, but it's the same v6 reliable powerful engine
they've got a model with a supercharger on it that puts up the 400 horsepower
but as I said, you start pumping more things in them the engine will wear out
fast, they're plenty fast enough with the stock horsepower really, you don't need
to keep adding it to make them bigger and bigger and faster, if you want a nice car
that's gonna last a really long time, you can't beat that v6 engine in a normally
aspirated situation, they're smooth running, they're long lasting, they get decent
gas mileage, it's exactly what I think is the perfect v6 engine, now me I
gotta say I'm a four-cylinder fan, they got plenty enough horsepower to get you around
get a little bit better gas mileage, but if you want a more luxurious car that's
gonna have a bit more power, run a lot smoother, and still not break down, you
can't beat the Toyota Lexus v6 engine, now realize that the Lexus is presently
made mainly in Japan, they got a crossover that's made in Cambridge Ontario, but
I'm convinced that one of the reasons those Lexus engines are so good is
because they have Japanese actually building them, they're really serious
about building their engines in Japan, I've had Japanese motorcycles I
throttled the heck out of them, and they wouldn't blow up, they didn't burn oil
every time you push the starter button they start right up, I mean they have
quality there is no arguing that, and sure their expensive cars but hey I
bought that one used $3,000 you know, you can always get used Lexus because they
can last so long, there's nothing wrong with buying a used one at a really good
price, cuz engines are rock-solid, I mean the last
thing in the world I'd advise anybody to buy would be a used Chrysler with a v6
engine, but getting to used lexus, no big deal I got customers doing that all
the time, and I said tell my customers, if you're gonna get a Lexus get a v6
don't get a v8, the v8 have more maintenance, they're hellacious to work
on because of their designs, designed so that when something breaks even the
starter you got to take the intake manifold off, you can spend over a
thousand bucks changing the starter, where with the v6 Lexus takes me like 15
minutes to change the starter, it's a nothing job, sometimes v8 is just
overkill, you don't need that much, like I said with his modern design, a v6 engine
today can put out four times what a v8 engine put out a few decades ago, so
there's plenty of power don't worry about not having enough power, so now you
know who makes the best engines, power, gas mileage, reliability and smoothness
and since this is the Thursday segment where I answer a viewers question place
your own question on the YouTube comments below and I'll pick the best
ones to make a single video to answer your questions, and where else can you
find a guy with 50 years experience of fixing cars to answer your own question
with a video, so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair
videos, remember to ring that Bell!