Cylinder number and arrangement depends on the purpose of the engine. Smaller (four and six cylinder) engines in front-wheel drive vehicles often use an inline design which orients cylinders vertically over the crankshaft and aligns them in a row. Other common orientations are a horizontal/opposed design which places cylinders flat facing each other with the crankshaft between them and a V-type design common in six and eight cylinder engines that features one cylinder head per block of cylinders oriented at a 60 to 90 degree angle to each other with the crankshaft at the bottom of the V.

The crankshaft converts the reciprocating motion of the piston into the rotational motion that's used to power the vehicle and its components.

Because a compressed spring will ex­tend violently, shock absorbers must be used to dampen the spring’s compression and extension cycles. Struts combine the spring and shock into one unit

An inline cylinder configuration places the cylinders in a single row either completely vertical or slanted. Due to this arrangement, an inline cylinder configuration makes the engine longer and, although it works well in four cylinder engines, performace suffers in larger engines due to the difficulty in evenly distributing the air-fuel mixture over the length of the engine.

Suspension springs are made with wide gap coils of rigid steel cable and both hold the vehicle chassis up off the ground and absorb energy from wheel movement making for a smoother ride.