Your intake manifold. It takes in air and sends it to your engine's combustion chamber. This is basically the start of the combustion process. After all, you can't have combustion without air. Engineering Explained is here to walk us through the process and explain how a variable intake manifold can create more power.

A longer intake runner setup is designed to provide greater power at the bottom end of the rev range. If you have shorter runners, you'll see greater horsepower numbers when the engine is up in the rev range. The best of both worlds happens when you have a variable intake manifold.

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A variable intake manifold smartly adjusts airflow to optimize horsepower over a greater rev range. This type of system is also called a variable resonance induction system, but all the automakers that make use of it call it by many other names. BMW utilizes DISA and DIVA. Ford utilized a Dual-Stage Intake or DSI system on its Yamaha-sourced V-6 in the Taurus SHO. 

There are many more variations and examples of this type of system, and they all work to optimize airflow into the engine. We'll let our friend Jason Fenske explain how it all works in the video above. To learn how these manifolds create a mini supercharging effect, hit that play button.