pancake engine (thing)

A pancake engine is an internal combustion engine that has the cylinders on a horizontal plane. This reduces the overall height of the engine, which allows the engine to be placed in a smaller compartment. A pancake engine can be either inline, (all the cylinders in a row), or horizontally opposed, (2 rows of cylinders across from each other). Porsche, Subaru, and Volkswagen have all used pancake engines.