When the first V8 engine arrived, it wasn’t in a vehicle’s engine bay; it was born in the sky and on the water. Between 1904 and 1910, the first eight-cylinder configurations debuted in aircrafts and marine vessels. A few years later, in 1914, Cadillac introduced the Type 51, which was powered by the first mass-produced automotive V8. At the time, these engines pushed the envelope of what was deemed possible from an engineering standpoint, but it was complex and very expensive.
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