Opel Has Been Building 16-Valve Engines for 100 Years

Four-valve per cylinder engines are ubiquitous in modern engines. In fact, it would be difficult to find an engine from a major automaker that did not use the technology today, but four-valve cylinder heads did not become normal in everyday cars until the 90s and were almost unheard of in road cars until the 50s. OpelOpelGermany, 1863 > present85 models
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is looking back on its history with four-valve engines going all the way back to 1913 with the Grand PrixOpel 110 PS Grand-PrixGermany, 1913 > 19132 photos
racer for the Grand Prix de France.

Opel built just three of the grand prix cars, and each one used a 4.5-liter 16-valve, four-cylinder engine with 110hp. It followed the car with the 1914 Green MonsterOpel 12,3 Liter 260 PSGermany, 1914 > 19143 photos
that used a 12.3-liter four-cylinder with four valves per cylinder to produce 260hp.

Opel did not have a four-valve road car until 1979 with the Ascona 400Opel Ascona 400Germany, 1979 > present2 photos
. The company wanted to go rallying where four valves were commonplace, but it had to build a road version to homologate it. The rally version had 237hp from a 2.4-liter four-cylinder; while the road version made 140hp from a detuned version of the same engine.

The brand’s first mass produced model with a four-valve per cylinder engine was the Kadett 2.0 GSi 16VOpel Kadett 2.0 GSi 16vGermany, 1988 > present in 1988. Its 2.0-liter four-cylinder made 148hp (150ps) and was co-developed with Cosworth.

Opel further developed the engine for Formula 3 racing in Europe and it was used to win 30 national championships around the world by the time it was retired in the mid-2000s.

All of Opel’s car engines today use four valves, and the current trend is to improve CO2 emissions with technologies like direct injection and turbocharging. Opel is in the middle of a complete replacement of its engine range that will be complete in 2016.