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The benefit of using a boxer engine versus a V engine is that it provides perfect balance because each piston's movement is exactly counterbalanced by the corresponding piston movement of the opposite side. Boxer-engined automobiles also generally have a lower center of gravity, giving better stability and control. However, boxer engines are also wider than normal engines and are more expensive to build than traditional engines and, thus, are not widely used by automobile manufacturers.
The flat configuration fits very well with air cooling and aircraft engines. Air-cooled designs such as in the VW Beetle used a flat-4, as did the Porsche 356 and 912. Both the older and newer models of the 911 use a flat-6, while SubaruSubaru (In katakana: ), a Japanese car company, is a subsidiary of Fuji Heavy Industries. General Motors is a 20% minority shareholder. Subaru" is the Japanese word for the star cluster Pleiades that is depicted in the company logo. In New Zealand, it is use the flat-4 and flat-6 design extensively, although referring to it as an "H engine". FerrariFerrari is an Italian manufacturer of racing cars and high-performance sports cars formed by Enzo Ferrari in 1929. At first, Scuderia Ferrari sponsored drivers and manufactured racecars; the company went into independent car production in 1946, eventually used a flat-12A flat-12 is an internal combustion engine in flat configuration, having 12 cylinders. The flat-12 is larger than a V12 and has no advantage in terms of vibrations. Thus the design is rarely used on production cars. Most of the flat-12 engines are not tru on the TestarossaThe Ferrari Testarossa is an automobile made by Ferrari that which went into production in 1984 as the successor to the Ferrari 512 BB. It shouldn't be confused with the "shark-nose" Ferrari 400 Testa Rossa, a GT sports car that ran in the World Champions. Air-cooled flat-twinBMW motorcycle powered by a flat-twin engine A flat-twin is a two cylinder internal combustion engine where the cylinders are arranged in a flat configuration. This geometry is probably the best regarding vibrations for a two cylinder engine. Most of the engines were used by CitroënCitroen is a French automobile manufacturer started in 1919 by Andre Citroen. Originally a mass-market car maker with relatively straight-forward designs, Citroen shocked the world in 1934 with the innovative Traction Avant (front wheel drive) ( 1934- 195 in their model 2CV and its derivatives, while the Citroën GS used a flat-4, and a flat-6 was proposed for the Citroën DS but rejected due to impractability. BMW uses a flat-twin in many of their motorbikes.