Posted Saturday, August 3, 2013 at 4:12am
There are only two car manufacturers in the world that use “flat” engines, Porsche and Subaru. The flat layout, also commonly called “boxers” due to the opposing cylinders punching towards one another horizontally when fired, has two undeniable engineering benefits. The first is that the engines lend themselves to being mounted very low within the car, allowing a lower center of gravity. Secondly, the natural positioning of the cylinders in this configuration effectively cancels a lot of the vibration inherent in other engine designs, eliminating size increasing balancing solutions.
