This Four-Engine Lexus Sedan Takes All-Wheel Drive to a New Extreme

The Quad-Engine Concept

There’s an old, tired cliché: “There’s no replacement for displacement.” What if you put four small-displacement engines into one car? That’s exactly what automotive fabricators at the YouTube channel Garage 54 have engineered. They tested out an experimental all-wheel-drive prototype utilizing four independent combustion engines. Rather than relying on a centralized powerplant, the mechanics mounted a dedicated motor for each individual wheel.

While modern gas engines generally feature highly integrated digital management, this specific project utilizes four identical 150cc single-cylinder units. Each compact motor produces about 10 horsepower and includes a continuously variable transmission, a differential, and a reverse gear. Electric starters let the operator start all four powerplants simultaneously from the main cabin. This configuration creates an incredibly unconventional drive layout that completely bypasses traditional transfer cases and centralized driveshafts.

Suspension and Fabrication Hurdles

Adapting a standard passenger chassis to accommodate four separate motors required extensive structural modifications. Utilizing a Lexus sedan as the primary testbed, the mechanics determined the factory suspension could not clear the necessary CV joints and custom axle shafts. The crew removed the front subframe entirely, welding in reinforced components from a Lada Niva to create viable mounting points.

Positioning the front engines within the bay consumed over a week of continuous fabrication. Similar to other complex custom builds, strict packaging constraints dictated the final engineering solutions. Because the factory steering hardware blocked a direct axle path to the hubs, the team implemented a custom chain drive system to transfer power to the front wheels.

Trial, Error, and Mechanical Failure

Slapping the engine onto the car was the easy part, but getting it to work in unison was another beast altogether. Synchronizing four independent engine throttles to a single accelerator pedal required meticulous cable routing. During the initial shakedown run, the severe mechanical stress instantly exposed the experimental prototype’s structural weak points. Unlike a highly polished V8-swapped roadster, this quad-engine rig struggled to maintain basic drive tension under load.

The custom drive chains repeatedly slipped off their sprockets during acceleration. The vehicle initiated the test utilizing all four engines but systematically lost drive to three wheels as the custom mounts and chain tensioners failed. The car ultimately returned to the garage running on a single 150cc engine, confirming the basic concept is remotely viable but needs substantial engineering revisions before we see it on the road.

For now, the chaotic shakedown serves as a harsh mechanical reminder of why we see just 1 engine inside most, if not all, cars. You do have to smirk and admire the creativity, no matter how unhinged.