Nissan VH41DE / VH45DE

Nissan's first V8 — the 4.1 VH41DE and 4.5 VH45DE — in the Infiniti Q45 and the Japanese-market President.

It was built to a standard the cars around it did not need. All-aluminium, four camshafts, and in the VH45DE a variable-lift system Nissan did not use again — an engine designed to prove a point against Lexus's 1UZ, and by most accounts it did.

Its complaints are age rather than design: distributor and coil failures with heat, an air-flow meter that skews fuelling as it ages, and oil leaks from seals now thirty years old.

Parts are the constraint. It was fitted to very few cars, it was replaced by the VK45DE — which has its own page here and shares almost nothing — and specialist knowledge outside Japan is thin.