Depending on your definition of the word ‘engine’, the smallest consists of a single atom, while others are so enormous a healthy adult could easily fit in one cylinder.

In this feature we’ll be concentrating on the chunkier ones. House rules: with one unavoidable exception, each of them has powered a vehicle which can be driven on the road, and anything significantly under 8.0 litres is too tiddly for us to be bothered with. We start small, and get increasingly larger…