The 10 Most Unusual Engines of All Time

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Strange name, sure, but the engine is even weirder. The 3.3-liter Commer TS3 was a supercharged, opposed-piston (each cylinder has two pistons with their crowns facing each other, and there are no cylinder heads), single-crankshaft (most opposed-piston engines have two), three-cylinder, two-stroke diesel engine. The Rootes Group dreamed up this beast to power its Commer-branded trucks. The TS3 offered ingenious packaging, connecting-rod rocker arms the size of a small cat, and at 270 lb-ft of torque, more grunt than many larger diesels of the time.








Thirty cylinders, five banks, five carburetors, five distributors, 1255 cubic inches. This is what happens when Detroit goes to war. Chrysler built the A57 as a way to satisfy a World War II tank-engine contract in a hurry, using as many off-the-shelf components as possible. It consisted of five 251-cube passenger-car inline-sixes arranged radially around a central output shaft. The resulting 425-hp pile of hairy freedom powered M3A4 Lee and M4A4 Sherman tanks.