In the present era where light weighting of vehicles to meet legislation driven emission norms has gathered much pace, the surface engineering approach has been attracting increasing attention as its adoption is deemed inevitable if light alloys of Al, Ti and Mg are to be inducted for harvesting the potential associated benefits of fuel saving and yet yield enhanced component life. This review article attempts to provide a glimpse of various engineered surfaces that are currently being pursued by the automotive industry to combat degradation due to phenomena such as wear, thermal, fretting, fatigue and corrosion. Since the field is vast and subject of considerable research attention globally, only examples from authors' lab have been included to highlight the immense promise of engineering surface for the automotive industry. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.