Automotive engine assembly and disassembly are common and crucial programs in the automotive industry. Traditional education trains students to learn automotive engine assembly and disassembly in lecture courses and then to operate with physical engines, which are generally low effectiveness and high cost. In this article, we developed a multilayer structured virtual reality (VR) system to provide students with training in automotive engine (Buick Verano) assembly and disassembly. The VR training system is designed to have several major features, including replaceable engine parts and reusable tools, friendly user interfaces and guidance, and bottom-up designed multilayer architecture, which can be extended to various engine models. The VR system is evaluated with controlled experiments of two groups of students. The results demonstrate that our VR training system provides remarkable usability in terms of effectiveness and efficiency. Currently, our VR system has been demonstrated and employed in the courses of Chinese colleges to train students in automotive engine assembly and disassembly. A free-to-use executable file (Microsoft Windows) and open-source code are availablefor facilitating the development of VR systems in the automotive industry.