Volkswagen has filed a patent for an engine mount built to bend and break in a specific, controlled way during a frontal crash, redirecting the engine down and rearward instead of letting it get pushed into the cabin. This is a patent filing only; Volkswagen has not confirmed the design for any production model.

• The application was filed with Germany’s Patent and Trade Mark Office (DPMA), filing reference 10 2025 115 270.5.
• It describes an asymmetrical lower engine mount, a variation on what’s commonly called a “pendulum” or “dogbone” mount.
• In VW’s design, the engine-side connection is rigidly bolted while the chassis-side connection uses a bushing, so the mount bends predictably instead of transmitting force straight through.
• The stated goal is keeping crash energy out of the passenger cabin by controlling exactly how and where the engine moves on impact.

What’s Different About This Mount

Most cars already use pendulum-style mounts, positioned above and below the engine to secure it to the firewall and radiator support. They handle normal driving loads fine. VW’s patent targets the moment those loads turn violent.

The filing places its new mount under and behind the engine, functioning as a lower support with two different connection types at each end: a bushing or bearing where it meets the car’s structure, and a stiffer, bolted connection where it meets the engine. That asymmetry is the whole point. In a frontal impact, the patent’s own example shows the engine getting pushed rearward while bending the support, moving further back in the car without moving upward toward the firewall. It can even be directed downward, bleeding off crash energy without shoving the engine block into the space where a driver’s legs and feet sit.

Why It Matters, If It Ships

Frontal crashes remain one of the most common and most severe collision types on the road, and where the engine block ends up during one has a direct effect on how much force reaches the people inside. A mount engineered to fail in a predictable direction, rather than an unpredictable one, gives crash engineers one more variable they can design around instead of hope for.

• Nothing here confirms which model, if any, will get this mount.
• Patent filings routinely describe technology years before, or instead of, it ever reaching production.
• The concept fits an industry-wide push toward more predictable, engineered crash structures rather than simply stiffer ones.

Whether this specific mount ever bolts into a real Volkswagen is genuinely unknown right now. But the engineering logic behind it, giving the engine a scripted escape route instead of an accidental one, is sound enough that it’s worth watching where else it turns up.