Volkswagen VR6

Volkswagen's narrow-angle six, and a genuinely unusual piece of engineering: the cylinder banks sit about 15° apart rather than the usual 60°, close enough to share a single cylinder head. That is what let a six-cylinder engine fit transversely in a Golf-sized engine bay, and it is why the VR6 exists at all.

Volkswagen's own designation for the family is EA390, which is what the parts catalogues and most model listings print — it is a petrol engine. It is not the 3.0 V6 TDI, which is the EA896 and, from 2010, the EA897; the two are confused often enough that searching parts on the wrong one is a common way to order the wrong thing.

The layout drives the diagnostics. One head over two offset banks makes the cooling and the timing arrangement idiosyncratic — the chains are at the rear of the engine, wear is age-related, and the noise is the warning rather than any code. Later 3.2 and 3.6 FSI members add direct injection and its intake-valve carbon.

The other characteristic complaint is thermal: these engines run hot in tightly packaged bays, and a failed thermostat or water pump escalates faster than it would in a longitudinal installation. Treat a coolant complaint on a transverse VR6 with more urgency than the temperature gauge suggests.