VW unveils 16-cylinder IRL engine

UPDATE Did you fall for this? Of course it was an April Fool's joke.

04/01/09 The Indianapolis 500 will exclusively use VW power in 2011 Racecar can exclusively reveal. VAG's new engines will be based on a revolutionary quad turbo W16 design. The two liter powerplants are said to be highly efficient and only use three quarters of the fuel used in the current IRL spec engines.

Whilst all the engine blocks will be identical a number of different cylinder head and bottom end layouts are available, each is to be badged by a different part of the VAG company, most notably Porsche. The most interesting variant is the triple crankshaft Bugatti branded unit, which trades off incredible efficiency and marginally higher power against increased weight and a higher centre of gravity.

A full study on the new engines will appear in next months magazine.