As an electric future approaches, some automakers still take the time to build engines for its most special cars by hand.
The carefully flaked edge on a stone axe, the patterned blade of a hand-forged sword, the dappled bare steel of prewar bodywork. Mankind is a tool-making species, though the complexity of the tools we use everyday mostly exceeds our understanding of their inner workings. Still, we take comfort in recognizing singular craftsmanship where we can. It can impart a humanity to an inanimate object.
From behind the wheel today, it can be hard to sense any shred of that humanity. A modern car is an enormously complex machine, flattering to deceive with clever differentials, its controls turning physical inputs into digital requests. The coming electric age promises an even more obscured experience, performance as convenience with instantaneous point-and-shoot torque.
If you believe that faster is always more enjoyable, then maybe you need to take a break here to microwave yourself a steak. However, if you view the passing of the internal combustion engine with at least a frisson of bittersweetness, then stick around.
A handful of automakers still maintain and celebrate that tenuous connection between man and machine, employing highly-skilled master builders to give cars a heartbeat. They are the engine makers, each tasked with putting a little of themselves into aluminum castings and polished rotating assemblies. It is an art form on the cusp of being lost to time. But not quite yet.
Takumi: Godzilla’s Masters
Dawn breaks in Yokohama, and the swaying commuter trains are filled with workers headed to offices and factories. Many are headed to Nissan’s main plant, a sprawling assembly of factories and warehouses that covers more than a hundred acres of docklands, and is capable of producing nearly half-a-million vehicles annually. The plant employs several thousand people, but only five of them are cleared to work in a hidden part of the facility.
Here, in a pressurized and tightly temperature-controlled clean room, the men they call takumi assemble the twin-turbocharged, six-cylinder heart of the Nissan GT-R. Next to the fast-paced output of the nearby assembly lines – 900 engines a day – the takumi work slowly. It takes roughly nine hours to produce a single GT-R engine.
Despite a cultural veneration for tradition, the Japanese are not often sentimental about aging modern technologies. For instance, when Seiko released the quartz-based Astron wristwatch on Christmas Day, 1969, it quickly devastated the traditional mechanical watch market. Japanese-made quartz watches were soon cheap, easy to mass produce, and ubiquitous; the long bet is that the same will soon be true for electric vehicles.
But the Nissan GT-R has always held a special place for Nissan. The current version is an aging beast, but a potent one, still capable of ripping off shocking acceleration and lap times. Beneath that bulky hood, every GT-R carries the mark and the name of the artisan who built its engine.
Nissan is tight-lipped about the selection requirements to reach the rank of takumi, but experience is key. Hiroyuki Ichikawa has been working for Nissan for roughly thirty-five years, and the collective experience of all five takumi is well over a century.
“I feel a lot of pressure to make sure there are no defects, and there is no difference in performance from other assemblers,” he says, speaking through a translator. “I like to assemble engines not only at work, but also in my personal life. I often assemble the engine of my own motorcycle.” (A Kawasaki W800)
“Takumi” literally translates to artisan in Japanese, and the term is ancient enough to have become a common given name. As might be expected, the build process has some antiquated elements, such as a manual checklist for each engine. However, the clean room also features electrically-driven power tools for more precise torque control and data logging.
Each engine is bench-tested before leaving for the assembly plant, and here the takumi rely on feel as well as testing feedback. While the V6 whirrs from 2000 to 6000 rpm, the builder will place his hand on the engine itself, feeling for any unusual vibration that a machine might miss.
The last step in the process is affixing an individual name plaque, and Ichikawa points out that having his signature on the engine provides an added level of motivation. It creates a personal connection of ultimate responsibility to the customer.
“We have the opportunity to come into contact with actual GT-R owners unlike other mass production lines,” he says, “We can directly feel the customer’s expectations for engine performance, which greatly improves our awareness of manufacturing. Hearing the voices of satisfied customers motivates me even more.”
Old Rabbits and Twin-turbo V-8s
Over the course of more than a decade at AMG, Thomas Schiller estimates he has built around 1800 engines. He’s had offers to change from assembly to a more administrative role, but he can’t be prized away. It’s what he was born to do.
For Schiller, as with many in the area surrounding Stuttgart, Mercedes-Benz is a family affair. Uncles and cousins worked for the manufacturer, and his own opportunity to apply with AMG came in 2010. “I was one of the lucky ones,” he says.
AMG’s “One man, one engine,” program stretches back to the days when that one man was Erhard Melcher. In times when pandemic supply chain issues aren’t disrupting operations, some 300 employees work at the Affalterbach facility, including engine assemblers and support and management staff. Each engine takes four hours to make, though there is variation depending on cylinder count and complexity.
A degree in mechatronics engineering is a base requirement to be hired as an AMG engine assembler. Competition for spaces is fierce, so other academic qualifications are often taken into consideration. Training takes two weeks of working alongside a master assembler, then a further two weeks under the eye of a watchful supervisor.
The casual German term for these seasoned workers is “an old rabbit,” the kind of wily veteran who has learned a few tricks over the years. Schiller says that the training is actually constant, as new engine lines are introduced regularly. The build team often liaises with the engineers during development, and each engine line has its own intricacies. However, for all assembly, there’s a certain inherent ability level that you must develop.
“Each step is tracked by computer, but it is not made to tell you what to do, only to track,” he says. “The most tricky part is you have to get a feeling for when you spin the engine.”
Whether there’s a resistance or smoothness to the action of turning an assembled rotating mass is part of the human touch to assembling an AMG V-8. Schiller can’t quite put into words what the ideal tactile response is noting only that it’s an acquired skill.
The AMG brand has a huge fanbase around the world, and many of the forums track the various engine builders. It’s possible to look up who built the engine on your C63, perhaps follow them on social media, and even contact them. Schiller says that hearing from customers is a regular occurrence, and a highlight of the job. It’s especially sweet when someone has put their car on a dyno and discovered that the power output is a little above the official factory rating.
Schiller grew up tuning his own cars, but stopped fiddling with them when he got his own first AMG, a C63. Now driving an E-class, he doesn’t see himself working anywhere else.
“I think I want to get to old rabbit.”
Blackwing Pride
“It’s not a stressful thing; it’s a prideful thing.”
Master Builder Nick Blakeney is clear-cut and direct about the feeling of putting his name to one of GM’s LT4 supercharged small-block V-8s. If it wasn’t the best, it wouldn’t be leaving the factory, let alone getting his sign-off on it.
The Performance Build Center in Bowling Green, Kentucky, is General Motor’s special facility for putting together its halo engines. Originally located in Michigan and set up to build the LS7 for the Z06 version of the sixth-generation Corvette, the PBC is the holy land for the small-block Chevy V-8. Every Blackwing Cadillac CT5-V will receive a hand-assembled LT4 sourced from the PBC, each engine built and signed by a single master builder.
Blakeney is a hobbyist wrench, with an LS-swapped C10 pickup at home. He humbly says he knew, “just enough about an engine to get myself in trouble,” when he came to the PBC several years ago. Today, he is a team leader who assembles fewer engines than the builders he oversees, but still keeps his skills sharp on the line. “It’s like being a little kid in a candy store,” he says.
Initial training at the PBC takes six weeks, and while those lucky enough to join the team need to display some mechanical aptitude, they need not be experienced with engines. In fact, Blakeney says that some of the most careful and successful master builders are those who started from scratch.
The smart benches where the V-8s are assembled are similar to the individual workstations found elsewhere in the industry, but there are a few differences. Workers can call up video explanations on certain assembly processes, particularly handy while training. All told, there are about forty-five staff here, including testing and logistics.
The key process, says Blakeney, is the assembly of the rotating mass. “That’s the heartbeat of the engine,” he says. The insertion of the pistons and the crankshaft is done with as much precision as possible, but also with the knowledge that these parts will soon be whirring on their way to cranking out 668 hp, bathed in oil, boost, and fire. It’s the creation of a monster.
Curiously, the master builders don’t often experience the full fury of what they hath wrought. Blakeney tells of sitting shotgun in a CT5-V at the car’s launch, with a hotshoe lapping the beast and whipping it sideways. As soon as the ride was done, he tumbled out and got on his phone to the builder who had made that particular car’s engine.
“I told him, you have no idea what we’re building here.”
But perhaps all these engine builders do have a firm grasp on what they are creating. A connection between the driver of a car and its maker. A touchpoint of heritage and craftsmanship that feels more special than if some robot spun the bolts. And an essence of pride in the work, of hearing the roar of all cylinders firing down the road and knowing you brought that flame into the world.
It’s a legacy well worth signing a name to.
Keyword: The Engine Builders Preserving the Art of Craftsmanship