With its symmetrical design and even firing order, the inline-six engine delivers a level of balance and smoothness that’s hard to match. However, being longer than most V8s, packaging constraints have limited the inline-six’s appeal in recent decades. That’s starting to change as automakers, in a quest for economies of scale, revisit the layout by developing modular designs shared with inline-fours and, in some cases, even inline-threes. The straight-6 is on an epic comeback tour.
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