Porsche Cayenne V6 or VR6?

[Zlatko]

Hey..me and a buddy of mine had a bet..

I told him that it's a brand new engine..a 90 degree V6 in the Cayenne..made by Volkswagen..

He said that it was a VR6 15 Degree that's been bored and stroked..

Who's right? Ive been reading..and it's not looking good...

Looks like im gonna lose 20$

[skillton]

I'm Zlatko's buddy.
The Cayenne was developed with VW's Touraeg. It's the same platform, and a lot of the difference's are only esthetical.
The Touraeg v6 has a 24v 3.2L VR6 engine, which VW also uses in the Golf r32, Phateon v6(I think only in europe), audi uses it in their new 3.2L v6 quattro, and porsche in the base cayenne.

The 3.2L is an evolution of the VR6 engine. The vr6 started as a 2.8 and 2.9L(european corrado) Narrow angle V6. The VR stands for narrow V in german. It was originally a DOHC 15* v6 with 2 valves/cylinder. VW redesigned it in 2002. It was still a 15* DOHC engine with one cylinder head, only now it had 4 valves/cylinder, and the displacement was still the same at 2.8, but the head was changed quite a bit, and I've heard VW had a lot of problems fitting 24 valves in there. You can find that engine in 2002.5+ 6spd VR6 GTI's and Jetta GLI's.

Then for the r32, and other models, they bored and stroked the block to 3.2L, and changed the design of the ports a bit to increase the flow, but the engine is still a Narrow angle V6, in other words a VR6. It's still 15*, it still has one cylinder head. Just has twice the valves and more displacement, along with better flowing ports.

From what I've heard the VR6 name confused people, so VW and the other car manufacturer's using it just changed the name to V6, but it is a narrow angle V6.
I've seen diagrams of the head design. I'll try to find them and post em up here.
Here's a scan of the r32 engine specs:

And here's some specs of the Cayenne's 3.2L "V6"
3189 cc V6
84/3.31 mm/in Bore
95.9/3.78 mm/in Stroke
11.5:1 Compression Ratio

[Motorhead]

You are both right.
The base model comes with the narrow VR6, but the diesel V6 TDI option is the 90 degree engine, with 2 heads and 4 camshafts.
When they mean VR they always use VR, and when they mean V, they always use V.
They never get sloppy about that, because VW makes both engine and they are both used in the Cayenne, Audi, and Passat.

[Boxster_S_girl]

Actually, it's based on the VR6 with a Porsche-specific revised intake, but still a narrow-angle V6: 15 degrees. Since the OP asked the question in 2004 he was referring to the 955.