The two-piece engine block houses a forged steel crankshaft ... and even found its way into the Porsche 914. The air-cooled VW engine seems like a distant thing of the past to most.

With 16 cars and 12 motorcycles, all air-cooled, this simple means of internal combustion finds the spotlight.

When air-cooled engines are mentioned, we tend to think of the VW Beetle or Porsche 911, but plenty of other cars featured them as well. First introduced in 1948, but discontinued by 1950.

For decades, the massively popular Volkswagen Type-1 Beetle and the Type-2 VW Microbus or Transporter were powered by a unique air-cooled boxer engine. The Volkswagen air-cooled engine is ...

Introduced in 1957 as a counterpart to the West German VW Beetle, the East German Trabant was powered by a 600cc 2-cylinder air-cooled 2-stroke engine. While it only had 18 horsepower and produced ...