VW ain't called VW for nothin' - it makes strange V and W engines ...

horsepower and torque are now considered commodities, with all the forced induction and tuning tricks of the trade, not to mention engine electronics. Or you could just rely on plain old cubic inches.

the engine configuration and number of cylinders mostly boils down to bragging rights.

Who knows - they might go full circle (pun intended) and come back to the radial engine (the W engine is like a sector of a radial engine).