Toyota 2ZZ-GE

Toyota's high-revving 1.8 — in the Celica GT-S and Corolla XRS, the Pontiac Vibe GT, and the Lotus Elise and Exige.

Lotus is the reason to know this engine's name. A mid-2000s Elise has a Toyota engine, and its service literature, its parts and its known faults are Toyota's — a fact that surprises owners and that no Lotus document emphasises.

Its defining feature is a lift-cam system that changes camshaft profile at about 6,000 rpm, and the change is dramatic enough that owners describe it as a second engine arriving. That switch is the design working, not a fault.

⚑ When the switch stops happening the cause is almost always oil, because the mechanism is hydraulic: low level, aged oil, or a blocked screen in the lift solenoid all stop it, and the car simply feels flat above 6,000 while running perfectly below. A blocked screen is a cheap part.

Its one serious mechanical weakness is the lift bolts that hold the rocker arms' sliding pins. On hard-used engines a bolt can back out and destroy the head — a known, documented failure with a known fix, and one of the few faults in this catalogue where the community's preventative modification is the standard advice.