What is the difference between a boxer engine and a straight (inline) engine?
In an Inline engine, all of the cylinders are in a straight line, hence the name. The layout is fairly simple to visualize, and if you’ve ooked under the hood of nearly any four-cylinder car, you have seen one already. Inline engines have the advantages of being fairly compact and they have a lower parts count than other layouts; only one head gasket, half the number of camshafts, one exhaust manifold, etcetera. On the downside, they are long once you get past four cylinders; FWD cars can only use four-bangers and going past six cylinders requires a ridiculously long hood. Boxers mount horizontally-opposed cylinders in pairs (see pic below). They are better balanced, usually requiring no crankshaft counterweights or balance shafts, and have a lower center of gravity. They are short both in height and length. Their downsides are that the require twice as many camshafts for the same number of valves per cylinder, the exhaust system is as complex and expensive as for a V-engine (two manif
