LOL I member reading about some furrin car company when I was in college.
Seemed they had designed a passenger car with 4 wheel drive. Yeah I know.
But here's the really weird part:
They put an inline FIVE cylinder engine in it. No seriously. A 5 cylinder. Why? Why create problems for yourself intentionally with an odd number of cylinders?
What in the world would that crank have to look like just to hang the counterweights on it? I was sure there would be no way to internally balance it, they'd have to hang a big ole counter-weighted harmonic dampener on the end of it.
Could they not go big enough with an inline 4 cylinder? did they not have room to fit a 6 cylinder?
We're they just trying to impress the boss by designing something no one else does?
(hint if no one else does it, there's most likely a good reason they don't).
But believe it or not that car with the 4 wheel drive and the inline 5 cylinder engine turned out to be a success despite the inherent challenges and they sold a ton of em over the next decade.
EDIT: Turned out it wasn't much harder to balance than an I4, just needed to do a little more slide-rule work and calcumalations.
I wouldn't mind owning a clean low-mile version of that car today!
