It’s Finally The End For Volkswagen’s Legendary VR6 Engine. Here’s Why It Was So Great

This week, Volkswagen announced that its hot-selling Atlas crossover is getting a new face, a new engine, and a way better interior. Buried between the lines was the fact that the VR6 engine will not be making a return. This means that when the 2024 Atlas launches in the third quarter, the VR6 will be dead in America. When this happens, Volkswagen’s fabled solution to packaging a V6 into a small car will die after powering cars for 32 years. Without this engine, there would be no W8, W12, or W16. Let’s take a look at this wonderful engine.

At the end of 2021, Volkswagen flew me out to Johnson Valley, California to send it in a pair of rally-prepped ID.4s on the King of the Hammers course. When I wasn’t jumping across expanses of desert, I was driving a 2022 Atlas Cross Sport SEL Premium R-Line that Volkswagen had loaned me.

As many of you know, I own two first-generation Volkswagen Touaregs, one with a 3.2-liter VR6 and the other with Volkswagen’s mighty 5.0-liter V10 TDI. The Atlas replaced the Touareg in America, so part of my drive with the Cross Sport involved evaluating if the Atlas felt like a Touareg with the off-road capability removed.

To my surprise, the Atlas Cross Sport was an incredibly competent crossover. It had tech that I could only dream of my Touareg having, it held the road well, and it accelerated to 60 mph nearly as fast as my V10, but without the maintenance nightmares of keeping a V10 diesel alive. The only part that I felt was not really there was the interior, which had inconsistent use of materials ranging from harsh plastic to nice leather. Now I can say that Volkswagen has fixed that with the 2024 model.

I was most surprised by what was under the hood. The badge on the back of that Atlas Cross Sport said “V6” but when I put the hammer down, I heard the sounds of an engine that was no regular V6. No, I popped the hood and found a familiar powerplant: Volkswagen’s narrow-angle VR6.

In the Atlas siblings, it’s a 3.6-liter VR6 pumping out 276 horsepower and 266 lb-ft torque, which gets the 4Motion AWD Atlas to 60 mph in about 8.3 seconds. Not bad for a 4,464-lb crossover.

In the 2024 model, the Atlas will be powered by a 2.0-liter turbo four making 269 horsepower and 273 lb-ft torque that hits at 1,500 RPM. This engine hits peak torque lower and apparently scoots the Atlas to 60 mph in a faster 7.5 seconds. It is even set to get better fuel economy.

Volkswagen officials tell me that the VR6 was using old technology and that made it hard to continue certifying for ever-tightening emissions standards. Add the fact that it’s not exactly frugal, and Volkswagen had plenty of reasons to phase it out.

We’ve all actually known the VR6 was on the way out for years; Road & Track wrote its obituary back in 2017. It just took a while to finally get phased out of every VW in production.

Over time, this meant that only the Atlas had the engine in America. And as of right now, just two Chinese market models have a smaller VR6, though I’m told that even those are on borrowed time as Volkswagen intends to keep the trend of smaller engines going.

So why am I sad that an inferior engine is being sent to the grave?

An Engine That’s Technically Both Inline And V

The VR6 engine is a rare configuration: it’s a compact V-engine that takes some attributes from an inline. The “V” in the VR6 name refers to “V-Motor” while the “R” refers to “Reihenmotor”, or inline-engine in German. Smash it all together and you get V-inline engine. But how can an engine be a V and inline at the same time, and why does it even exist?

The story of this type of engine actually goes way back to 1922 and with a different company. In 1922, Lancia launched its own famous V4 in the Lambda. Like most stuff Lancia put it out before it became a barely-existing afterthought at Stellantis, this car was pretty innovative. It was built with unitized construction and it had an independent suspension. Under its hood sat a narrow-bank angle aluminum Lancia V4. Bank angle started at 13 degrees and displacement started at 2.1 liters, growing to 2.6 liters. These engines had power outputs from 49 horses to 69 horses.

Lancia would continue to experiment with its V4 until it was plunked down into its final vehicle in 1963, the Fulvia. In this application, Lancia was using a 13-degree bank angle V4 mounted at a 45-degree angle. It sat in the Fulvia until its final year in 1976, and by that time the bank angle had decreased to 11 degrees and the engine was making about 130 horses.

The VR engine would make a triumphant return in 1991. This time, it would be made by Volkswagen. That year, the Corrado and the Passat B3 would have the option of a 2.8-liter VR6 making 178 HP and 172 HP, respectively. The VR6 was a triumph in packaging. It allowed Volkswagen to shoehorn V6 power into an engine bay that normally housed a four. For example, when the Corrado launched, the most powerful engine was a 1.8-liter G60 supercharged four making 158 HP. The VR6 allowed that modest gain to 176 HP and later, 188 HP. Back in the days before turbocharged four-cylinder engines were as ubiquitous as they are now, this allowed VW to put down some respectable grunt in a small package.

How Volkswagen did it was pretty genius, too. Instead of having a 60-degree or 90-degree angle between cylinder banks like you’d see in a typical V-engine, Volkswagen’s VR6 would initially space them out only 15 degrees. The cylinders would be staggered and thanks to the compact packaging, these were technically V-engines that shared a common head.

This type of engine design creates some engineering challenges, and I’ll let the folks of EngineLabs explain:

In order to maintain the typical 120-degree firing interval between the cylinders, the split-pin design offsets each bank’s crank journal by 22 degrees. Another aspect of the engine design shared with inline engines is obvious when looking at the crankshaft. The crankshaft bears more resemblance to that of an inline-six crankpin arrangement than that of an even-fire (split-pin) V6 crankshaft.

Just like the block, a single-cylinder head for two banks of cylinders creates some unique considerations. Built in both two- and four-valve-per-cylinder designs, the overhead camshaft cylinder head design posed a unique challenge to engineers. In order to have each intake runner be the same length and volume to ensure that each cylinder was making the same power at a given RPM, they had to get creative, while maintaining tight packaging.

The VR6 didn’t just stay in its original configuration, either. The VR6 forms the basis of the VR5, an engine with the same architecture but with a cylinder deleted. When Ferdinand Piëch took control of Volkswagen in 1993, the VR6 was already in widespread use. He used the VR engine as the basis for the famous W engine.

A W12 is just two VR6 engines married together, making a “W” shape. Wolfsburg would take the basic VR design and use it to make W engines ranging from the optional W8 engine for the Passat B5.5 and all of the way up to the W16 found in Bugattis to even concept W18s. As Volkswagen’s officials have told me, without the VR engine the Bugatti Veyron might not have had an engine.

And if all of that isn’t convincing enough, listen to how tuned VR6 engines sound:

I’ve seen a number of VR6 builds over the years and it makes sense because it’s nominally a V6 that has a footprint barely larger than a four.

Of course, I have my own VR6 in my 2005 Volkswagen Touareg. Despite it being the lowest engine available for that SUV, it has been a reliable workhorse. It has towed a Honda Beat and a Suzuki Every across the country, it takes me off-roading, and it has done it all running so smoothly that at idle you may forget that it’s even running. Over the course of my ownership, it has scored about 18 mpg, too.

Why Volkswagen No Longer Needs The VR6

Alright, so if this engine is so great, why has it been disappearing?

Indeed, there was once a time when the VR6 found a home in everything from the Eurovan, to the Golf, Touareg, and even the Eos. In recent years, the VR6 could be found in the Passat, the Atlas, and Chinese market models like the Audi Q6 and the Volkswagen Talagon. Now, the VR6 can be found only in the Chinese models, and I’m told that even those are on borrowed time. So, what gives? Why is Volkswagen killing off its legendary VR6?

Well, this excellent video from Jason from Engineering Explained and Charles from Humble Mechanic explain:

In short, the pair explain that the VR6 has awesome packaging, but it’s a weird engine to work with. Add the fact that a modern turbo four can make the same output with better efficiency, and you have an engine that doesn’t really need to exist. Blame tightening emissions standards and a general downsizing of internal combustion engines across the industry, plus the rise of EVs, and you get why oddball motors like this don’t work as they used to.

What Volkswagen’s officials told me echoes this. The VR6 comes from a time when Volkswagen made more power from more engine. Now, a smaller engine can do the same job and in theory, do it better.

Thus, Volkswagen no longer needs or even has the desire to keep the VR6 around. It did a great job powering enthusiast cars for three decades and even being the basis for some of the wildest engines ever put into production cars. Now, the engine is passing the torch to smaller turbo fours—to say nothing of stuff like the electric ID.4.

But countless water-cooled VW fans will always have a soft spot in their hearts for the mighty VR6, the oddball six that’s roughly the size of a four and had character in spades.

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