What Engine Makes The Coolest Coffee Table?

An engine block-based coffee table is popular man-cave furniture for many gear heads.
Ferrari V8s, Lamborghini V10s and even radial airplane engines have all been converted.
We dug though tables offered on the Bring a Trailer auction site to find some of the best.

You’ve got three core options when your supercar engine fails. Fix it, sell it for spares, or hope the price of aluminum is high and scrap it. But there is a fourth option. And that’s to clean the hell out of it, lay a sheet of tempered glass over the top and turn it into furniture that’s guaranteed to get approving nods when other gearheads drop by.

It’s hard to pin down exactly when the idea of turning engines into coffee tables became a trend, but it was already a thing before the 2002 BBC Top Gear reboot gave it global exposure. Clarkson, May, Hammond and their guests sat around a table made from a Jaguar V12 block, but over the years pretty much every kind of performance car mill you can think of has had the the table treatment.

The best ones really do blur the boundaries between car parts, furniture and art installation, and they’re not cheap. Some sell for more than $70,000, though it’s possible to pick a less exotic one up for a couple of grand. Or even make your own if you’re prepared to put in the time and muscle.

We trawled through the listings of tables sold on the Bring a Trailer auction site in the last 18 months to pull out some of the most beautiful, significant or just interesting. So grab a brew, take a look at the contenders and tell us which you’d put in your garage or lounge.

BMW S85 V10

What Engine Makes The Coolest Coffee Table?

Premature rod bearing wear finished off many a V10 from BMW’s 2004-10 M5 and M6, but some have found a new lease of life in living rooms. This example of the 500 hp (507 PS) 5.0-liter engine has a carbon intake cover and illuminated M logos on the valve covers. The only disappointment is you can’t hear it scream. It sold for $7,000.

Tesla Plaid Rear Drive Unit

Even EVs haven’t totally missed out on the table trend. This rear drive unit allegedly came out of a Model S Plaid and spent time on display in a Tesla showroom before being covered in glass. It’s not as visually interesting as a combustion engine, but someone liked it enough to pay $8,051 for it this past August.

Porsche 911 Flat Six

Water-cooled Porsche flat sixes stripped of all their accessories look as dull as Tesla drive units, and wouldn’t be our first choice for a coffee table build. But an older air-cooled six with that giant cooling fan, and especially one equipped with carbs, is a different story. This early 1970s 2.2 changed owners for $13,250.

Lamborghini Gallardo V10

Bring a Trailer’s back catalog is littered with different Ferrari engine tables, but not many built from dead Lamborghini motors. Here’s one exception, based around a Gallardo V10 and painted retina-burning yellow. Not so visible, but a nice touch anyway, are the four pistons being used as feet. It sold for $12,527.

Bentley W12

This one grabbed us because it reminds us how different Bentley’s W12 engine, and Bugatti’s W16, and VW’s VR5 and VR6 engines, are from regular vee and inline motors. Each ‘V6’ that makes up the W12 uses one cylinder head, making the finished engine incredibly compact for its cylinder count. Sold for $5,100.

Pagani Exhaust

Okay, so it’s not an engine, but let’s not get pedantic when we’re talking about a table that looks this good. The seller claimed the titanium pipes came from a Zonda, and bagged $25,000 when the hammer fell in February.

Jaguar V12

Here’s a different take on the Top Gear Jaguar V12 table that introduced many of us to the idea years back. While Clarkson’s crew rested their cups on a table made from a bare Jag V12 block, this one gives us the reverse, displaying only the V12’s guts. Not pretty, but fascinating all the same. Sold for $7,077

Maserati Tipo 107 V8

Unlike most table engines, this one is so built-up, it looks like you could junk the glass and drop its straight into a project car. Sourced from a 1980s Maserati Quattroporte III, this 4.9-liter quad cam V8 comes with four Weber 42 downdraft carbs and even plug leads and dizzy cap. It sold for $8,800.

Lycoming Radial Engine

This nine-cylinder radial engine is out of an airplane, not a car, but it looks so good we couldn’t pass it up. The listing says it dates to 1944 and made 300 hp (304 PS) when new. All those air-cooled barrels look fantastic, but so they should considering the table sold for $27,000.

Ferrari F140 V12

More than 200 hours were lavished on this Ferrari 812 engine, the seller claimed, work including cutting away parts of the block and polishing internal components. The result is mesmerizing, and so is the sale price. Someone paid $81,000, money that buys plenty of fully drivable sports cars.

What kind of engine would you turn into a table? Drop a comment below and let us know whose motor should be holding up your coffee mug in your dream garage build. And click here if you want to see all of the other tables Bring a Trailer has sold.