THE 10 BEST AND WORST ENGINES MADE BY MAJOR AUTOMAKERS

Best Toyota Engine: UZ Series V8s

If you’ve ever owned a Toyota that felt like it would last forever, chances are it had one of these under the hood. The UZ series V8 engines are kind of legendary. They first showed up in 1989, and Toyota nailed it right out of the gate.

Take the 1UZ-FE, for example. It debuted in the Lexus LS400 with a smooth 4.0-liter design and a pretty advanced (for its time) quad camshaft setup. It made around 256 horsepower at first, and later versions with Toyota’s VVT-i tech cranked that up to 290 hp. Not bad for a luxury cruiser from the ‘90s.

But things got even better with the 2UZ-FE. Toyota swapped in a beefier cast iron block, bumped up the size to 4.7 liters, and made it supercharger-friendly. The result? One of the most bulletproof engines Toyota ever built. There’s even a famous story of a guy driving his 2007 Tundra—powered by a 2UZ-FE—over a million miles. Toyota was so impressed, they tore the engine down just to see how it held up. Spoiler: it was still in good shape.