The fascination of miniature engines is manifested in no greater detail than this stunning W32 engine built by Jose Manuel Hermo Barreiro, better known as Patelo.

A Spanish engineer, he reportedly spent 2,500 hours fabricating, machining and assembling this carefully detailed W32 engine. Granted, it doesn’t operate as a functional internal combustion engine–it’s operated by compressed air–but this visual masterpiece is a tribute to precision modeling and remarkable realism.

Just admire the ballet of those rocker arms and the fidelity of the valve chatter. It’s so smooth that Patelo can balance coins on their ends atop the air cleaners. Overall there are 850 components that required 632 screws for assembly. Cylinder bore is just under 14mm, and the crank stroke is 10mm.

Yes, we have a fascination of mountain motors at the drag strip and cargo-ship diesel engines with cylinders big enough for a mechanic to walk inside, but the ultra-small scale modeling world presents fascinating challenges to the engine builder, and we salute them.