Toyota Motor Corporation is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturer headquartered in Toyota City, Aichi, Japan. It was founded by Kiichiro Toyoda and incorporated on August 28, 1937. Toyota is the List of manuf ...

's V family of engines were a longitudinally-mounted

V8 engine A V8 engine is an eight- cylinder piston engine in which two banks of four cylinders share a common crankshaft and are arranged in a V configuration. Origins The first known V8 was the Antoinette, designed by Léon Levavasseur, a ...

design. They were used from the 1960s through 1997. The V family engine was used in the prestigious

Toyota Century The is a lineup of full-size luxury cars and limousines produced mainly for the Japanese market, serving as Toyota's Flagship#Automotive, flagship car within Japan; globally the unrelated Lexus LS series is Toyota's flagship luxury model. Pro ...

. Toyota had worked with Yamaha to produce the first Japanese full aluminum alloy block engine. The V family is often referred to as the "Toyota Hemi" as the engine features a cylinder head design with approximately

hemispherical combustion chamber A hemispherical combustion chamber is a combustion chamber in the cylinder head of an internal combustion engine with a domed "sphere, hemispheric" shape. An engine featuring this type of hemispherical chamber is known as a hemi engine. In pra ...

s. The V engine was first used in the Crown Eight from 1964 to 1967 as part of the second generation Crown range. Thereafter the Crown Eight was replaced by the upmarket

. The 3V, 4V and 5V engines were used in the

up until 1997, when it got a complete redesign and replaced the V8 for the 5.0 L 1GZ-FE V12. The V series engines, like several

engines (e.g. 2T-C, 2M, 4M etc.) at the time had a hemispherical combustion chamber. The position of the spark plugs, like the 2T-C and Chrysler's Hemi, were located on the top of the head.

References

{{reflist V V8 engines