The first V 8 engine of record was not A De Dion Bouton but was the Antoinette V 8 of 1903 Antoinette had a 180 degrees crankshaft did all others until Wright who was making the Hispano Suiza of 718 cu In and 1124 cu in in about 1918 or a later wanted to put the 90 degree crankshaft into the 1124 engine but the Navy and the Army Air Corp wanted air cooled Radials so this left it up to Cadillac to do it in 1923 This is recorded in Manuel Lage s book about Hispano Suiza page 66 Line 10 That design came from a Frenchman with a background in art L on Marie Joseph Clement Levavasseur 1863 1922 He started work on his new engine in about 1900 His engine had eight cylinders but instead of putting them in a straight line Levavasseur arranged them in the shape of a V It was a powerful and compact design and when he received a French patent on December 2 1902 Levavasseur became the first person to patent what we now call a V 8 engine The Antoinette engine was designed and built in France by L on Levavasseur Named after the designer s daughter it was Europe s most widely used engine until 1909 1910 The first Antoinette engine dated from about 1901 and was used in a speedboat By 1905 Levavasseur had produced a water cooled engine with eight cylinders arranged in a 90 degree V and with direct fuel injection It was safe strong and fairly powerful generating 50 horsepower 37 kilowatts and weighing about 110 pounds 50 kilograms Its power to weight ratio was not surpassed for 25 years Antoinette VII Designed by L on Levavasseur who was an artist as well as a gifted engineer the Antoinette range possessed an almost art nouveau sense of elegance The engine also named Antoinette came first being designed by Levavasseur in 1903 to power motor boats Both Santos Dumont and the Voisins used this engine to power their early machines The motor was of advanced design utilizing direct fuel injection and evaporative steam cooling which took place in long tubes fixed along the sides of the fuselage M L Anderson