EDITORIAL: Sunset for the American V8

Technologies transition from dominance to nearly dead at different speeds and for various reasons. That's particularly true for motive power. Pistons, cams and valves are giving way to anodes, cathodes and inverters. Governments and OEMs are pledging hard deadlines (2035!) to end sales of combustion-engine light vehicles. Amid the radical changes, what becomes of the V8 - the engine type that has defined American cars and trucks and has spurred their sales for the past 70 years?

It took more than two decades for the automobile to end the horse's reign as the mainstream prime mover. Well into the heyday of Ford's Model T, streets in many U.S. towns remained clogged with horse-drawn vehicles, period photos show.