Variable Valve Timing: What Is It? Who Needs It?

The language of import performance can be strange. Sometimes it's a verbal stew of numbers and letters--RX-8, NSX, and MR2, for example--that seem randomly tossed together. At other times it adopts words, such as Civic and Skyline, that originally had no relation to the automotive world at all. Weirder still is when companies just make up stuff, like Sentra and Celica, and hope that names like those will make you want to own one of these vehicles--even if you have no clue of what it means. (The import world isn't alone in this. Who ever thought Citation was a good name for a car, anyway?)

The jargon goes well beyond just names. Car specs are full of abbreviations that may or may not have any meaning at first glance. And sometimes we get so used to seeing those abbreviations that we may think we know what they mean, but in reality, we don't. So we make stuff up. Sure, we could describe what DOHC means, or TDC. But what about VTEC, that engineering feat that's been around for more than a decade and has crossed ver from the race-bred NSX to the bread-and-butter Civic? Do you know exactly what it is, how it works, or what makes it different from the new i-VTEC? What about the other V-word systems, such as Toyota's VVT-i, Nissan's CVTC, or Mitsubishi's MIVEC?

All of those letter scrambles are part of the wonderful world of variable valvetrain systems, an awesome technology that is crossing over from high-performance cars to the more mainstream sedans and even--shudder--SUVs. We'll explain what these systems are and how they work so you can toss the terminology around, know exactly what it means, and impress silicone-enhanced females and their "curious" girlfriends. After all, that's what it's all about, right?