Hmm, I didn’t challenge them. I researched with those groups, went online to the Jeep sites, etc. I look forward to DB’s wisdom in future posts.
Chrysler’s “World Engine” was developed in a joint venture between Chrysler, Hyundai and Mitsubishi. The World Engine is the same as Hyundai’s Theta engine used in Hyundai vehicles beginning in 2006 but not the same as the Theta II engine.
My local natural gas company and taxi companies use Jeep Patriots in their fleets, can’t be that bad of a vehicle.
FWIW Consumer Reports in 2015 gave the 2011 Patriot engine excellent reliability ratings. The Patriot model doesn’t appear in any of the CR used car reliability ratings I could find since 2015, presumably b/c it didn’t sell in large numbers.
World engine? hmmm … I wonder if eventually they’ll only be a half dozen automobile engines that are shared by all the automobile companies for their new cars.
I don’t kill brain cells pondering such matters . . .
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@George_San_Jose1. I think about GM until the mid 1970s when each division developed its own engine. Then, in 1977, some of the full sized Oldsmobiles had Chevrolet engines installed at the factory. GM didn’t tell anyone–it all came out when the owner of a new Oldsmobile 88 went to the Oldsmobile dealer for a new fan belt and was sent to the Chevrolet dealer.
Think about lawnmowers. Most of the engines are Briggs & Stratton, Honda, or Kohler.
If we move to electric cars, my guess will be a world motor and a world battery.
That Buick straight 8, was the second smoothest engine I’ve ever experienced. ( The first was a 1930’s Cadillac V 16, but that was a horse of a different color entirely). @Triedaq, do you remember F head engines, I think their last usage was in Jeeps.
@old_mopar_guy. Those Buick inline 8 cylinder engines were not only smooth but had a lot of torque at low rpm. I didn’t have a car when I was in college. I took a 50 mile bus trip each way every other week for a horn lesson with a music professor at a different university. The buses operated by a small company were built by Flxible (yes, that is not a misspelling). These buses were powered by a straight 8 Buick engine mounted in the back end of the bus. These buses were manufactured in the 1940s through the mid 1950s with the Buick straight 8 engines. The later buses were diesel powered.
I do remember the Willys F-head engine. The theory was that having the intake valves in the head made the engine more efficient as far as gas mileage was concerned, and having the exhaust valves in the block allowed these valves to run cooler and last longer.
I am not sure about the theory of the valves running cooler and lasting longer in a flat head engine. My parents had a 1952 Dodge with the 230 cubic inch flathead 6. It had to have the valves ground at 45,000 miles. They also had a 1954 Buick Special with the overhead valve V-8. My dad bought the Buick from a friend in 1955 when I started my freshman year in high school. I bought the car from my dad my second year in graduate school. I sold the car s couple of years later and it had 160,000 miles and had never had the heads off the engine. It also didn’t use any oil. That was unusual back in those days. I should have kept the Buick, but I thought I wanted a newer car so I bought a 1965 Rambler Classic.
When I was born in 1951, my father had a 1950 Buick Roadmaster Riviera 4 door sedan ( that was the long wheelbase model). In my mind I can still hear that engine and the soft whine of the Dynaflow. I missed that car when he got a 1954 Chrysler New Yorker, but that hemi sure had guts.
@old_mopar_guy Not only was the 1954 Chrysler hemi engine more powerful, but the PowerFlite transmission used a two speed planetary gears as well as the torque converter to get the car underway while the Buick Dynaflow depended completely on the torque converter for torque multiplication. Also, I think a 1954:Chrysler New Yorker was smaller and lighter than a 1950 Buick Roadmaster.
So is the aircraft carrier Enterprise!
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No, overhead valve… or maybe valve-in-head-beside piston (a bit cumbersome!) 
The engine is a flat-6 or boxer-6
And overhead cam.
Not many people are aware of it, but the Dynaflow, the first generation Powerglide, and the early Ultramatic were CVT’s.
How, exactly?
I am no authority on obsolete automatic transmissions but I too must ask the same “How, exactly?” question that @texases just did. I don’t think there was anything CVT about them… was there? Surely not… ?
The CVT as I understand it has steel belts that move up and down in cone shaped pulleys. The torque converter in the Buick Dynaflow transmitted power through oil between the turbine driven by the engine and a similar turbine that received the power. The illustration I have seen is to picture two identical electric fans facing each other. One fan is plugged and turned on while the other fan is not powered. Ultimately, the fan that isn’t powered will turn at tvhe same rpm as the powered fan. A fluid coupling operates in this fashion. The illustration with the electric fans is similar for the torque converter except that the pitch of the fan blades can change so that the second fan turns at lower rpms but more power is transmitted. In either the fluid coupling or the torque converter there is some slippage.
I had a 1948 Dodge with the fluid coupling. It had a regular clutch and a three speed manual transmission. The fluid coupling allowed the car to start off in high gear, but the acceleration from a dead stop was painfully slow. However, one could come to a full stop without depressing the clutch pedal and the engine wouldn’t stall. Beginning in 1949 on the Dodge, a semi automatic transmission was available as an option. There was a clutch to put the car in drive range, low range, reverse, and neutral. Normally, one depressed the clutch, selected the drive range, released the clutch, accelerated to above 15 mph, released the accelerator and the transmission dropped into high gear. When the speed fell below 15 mph the transmission dropped back into a lower gear. The clutch did not need to be depressed when coming to a stop. I drove my parents’ 1952 Dodge that was equipped with this transmission.
The General Motors 4 speed Hydramtic back in the 1940s through the 1950s had a fluid coupling. The transmissions weren’t as smooth as the Buick Dynaflow or Chevrolet PowerGlide, but had less slippage. Most manufacturers ultimately went to a three speed automatic transmission with a torque converter.
My only experience with the CVT transmission was my institution rented a Nissan Sentra for me to drive to a conference.The round trip was 700.miles. I thought the Sentra performed just fine.
Multiple torque converters in Dynaflow transmission operated as virtual CVT automatics.
They multiplied their torque entirely through the torque converter and not through gears. Effective ratios were from 4:50-1.00 to 1:00-1:00. All of those transmissions did have 2 speed planetary gearing but only shifted into low speed manually.
@old_mopar_guy. In 1953 the Chevrolet revised the transmission so it automatically started in low from a full stop when the selector was in drive. I knew a lot of Buick owners who would put the Dynaflow in “low” when starting out from a stop and then shift over into “drive”.
I know. That’s why I specified " first generation" Powerglide. Also did you know John DeLorean got his start as an engineer at Packard? One of his first projects was converting Ultramatic from a high gear start to a low gear start with an automatic upshift to high?