Pelle Söderström/YouTubeScroll far enough through the feed of your social media network of choice, and you'll probably encounter some AI-generated content, whether you realize it at the time or not. Although there are some tools you can use to figure out if an image was generated with AI — or a video or any other piece of media for that matter — sometimes AI generates content so outlandish that it's easy to spot.A video of an inline-16 engine running sounds implausible enough that you could easily dismiss it as AI, but it is in fact a very real creation. It's the work of Pelle Söderström, a Swedish engineer who spent years designing and building the engine after first dreaming about it as a boy. Söderström used four Volvo B20 engines as a starting point, then spent 13,000 hours designing, prototyping, and refining his creation to turn their parts into a single engine.He documented the build in an extensive manual that details the engine's technical specifications over the course of more than 300 pages. Anyone who'd like to read through those details (in Swedish) can do so through Söderström's website, Sweet-16.AdvertisementAdvertisementThe Herkules 1934 is extremely long thanks to its unconventional design, clocking in at 2,646mm, or roughly 8.7 feet. However, its displacement isn't exceptionally big by the standards of the 1930s. It has a total displacement of 8.1 liters, which makes it bigger than any car engine in mass production today but slightly smaller than the biggest V8s ever fitted to production cars.Read more: 4 Common Problems With V6 EnginesNo one else has built an inline-16 engineSöderström called his engine "Herkules 1934" because he thought that an inline-16 engine was something that might have been found in a luxurious 1930s grand tourer. The early 20th century certainly wasn't short on cars with high-displacement engines, with many of the most powerful pre-war engines having displacements of more than 10 liters.There were also a couple of V16 engines produced during the era. The most notable of those is the Cadillac V16, but smaller carmakers like Marmon also produced their own V16 engines. However, none of those carmakers, big or small, ever produced an inline-16 engine, making Söderström's creation completely unique.AdvertisementAdvertisementEven after Söderström first got his engine started, there was still work to do. The most recent video on his YouTube channel, uploaded in November 2020, shows the engine in a more complete state. It runs more smoothly than before, with Söderström briefly revving it to show off its exhaust note. On his website, he notes that he has no plans to fit the engine into a car, with the main goal of the project simply being to build something he'd envisioned for a long time and listen to it in action. Thanks to his videos documenting the build, now we can listen too.Want the latest in tech and auto trends? Subscribe to our free newsletter for the latest headlines, expert guides, and how-to tips, one email at a time. You can also add us as a preferred search source on Google.Read the original article on SlashGear.
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