BERLIN: Car chiefs like Adrian Hallmark, Mate Rimac or Stephan Winkelmann talk ruefully these days about their brands' engine portfolios.
On the one hand, the bosses of Bentley, Bugatti or Lamborghini can hail cars with unrivalled performance, yet they must prepare their customers to say goodbye to the past masters of internal combustion like the V12.
The trio of brands stands not only for ostentation and splendour but, above all, for bountiful horsepower.
They also stand for an engine concept that will no longer exist after 2035 when new cars with any kind of combustion engine are banned from sale in Europe.
These performance machines all rely on complex, large-capacity engines with lots of cylinders. With electrification gaining momentum, sophisticated motors of this kind are dinosaurs destined to become exotic if not extinct.
"Down-sizing has been a big trend among engine developers for years in order to get consumption and emissions down," said Thomas Schuster from the KÜS expert association.
The trend toward smaller engines is easy to understand. Smaller motors with fewer cylinders use less fuel. Friction losses are also lower. A downsized engine is also naturally also lighter, so that less mass has to be moved.
What is lost in terms of power can be compensated for, at least in part, by bolting on a turbo or supercharger or by adding an electric motor.
With new regulations demanding fewer CO2 emissions, the scope for justifying large engines is also shrinking.
Smaller cars and compacts today usually make do with three cylinders, a configuration that would have been considered too feeble even 20 years ago,
Even in the luxury class, six cylinders enjoy top rank and avid tuners like Mercedes in-house performance unit AMG are slowly phasing out the mighty V8.
Over at Bugatti it is the same story: "This is the last time we will put the unique V16 engine in a new model," said company boss Mate Rimac.
He was referring to the 8.0-litre engine. With up to 1,176 kW/1,600 hp on demand, the unit makes its debut in the mighty Bugatti Mistral roadster.
After the 544 kW/740 hp Batur, there will also be no new Bentley model with a six-litre, 12-cylinder engine, said company boss Hallmark.
Lamborghini boss Winkelmann laments too that the Aventador LP 780-4 will mark the end of the high-revving naturally-aspirated V12. Appropriately enough, the super sports car bears the suffix "Ultimae".
These brands are not alone. Currently, Ferrari and Aston Martin also have a V12, as do Rolls Royce and Maybach.
But BMW has already taken the 12-cylinder out of service. And at Mercedes it only powers the ultra-posh Maybach version of the S-Class. Developers and decision-makers do not give the 12-cylinder a long shelf life.
Rolls-Royce, for example, aims to phase out the big combustion engines by 2030 at the latest, offering only electric cars in the style of the Spectre.
The demise of the big engines will have only a limited effect on the global climate but some enthusiasts will be sad to see them go.
Design professor and automotive philosopher Paolo Tumminelli said it was justifiable to speak of engine artform, as engineers seek to create jewel-like power units with perfect balance and refinement.
The more complex the engine, the greater the art involved, said Tumminelli, even if downsizing is good for the environment.
"For our civilisation, the abolition of the multi-cylinder as the ultimate monument of the machine age and a symbol of genius is a tragic loss," said the expert.
Bucking the trend is luxury maker Pagani. The company said that after four years of research into developing an electric car, it decided that producing an EV would not be exciting enough to captivate fans of the marque.
The automotive community has reacted warmly to news that Pagani is sticking to V12 greatness and meanwhile Lamborghini's Stephan Winkelmann is keeping the spark plugs of hope burning too.
A successor to the range-topping model will have a hybridised V12 engine, namely a greener one with an electric motor tacked on.
