In some cases that is true. The 2JZGTE was built to meet homologation requirements as Toyota's JGTC racing engine. This is why it was extremely over-engineered and simply de-tuned for production cars. I'm sure there are a bunch of engines from other manufacturers that have a similar story behind them.Striker94 wrote:Do you think that maybe tuning is what the designers had in mind all along?
Other times, manufacturers will over-engineer a motor to simply make it more reliable. This is the case with many Japanese cars, since Japanese people don't service their cars properly, often neglecting oil changes.
In America it seems to work the other way: car companies just reduce the output of the engine to make it more reliable, resulting in big displacements to keep power levels reasonable.
I think that covers most of it.