So GM is trademarking LT-5 engine moniker

[Paul Workman]

Went to a little town Route 66 gathering yesterday, and a little spontaneous Vette show-and-shine gathering appeared at a Route 66 dirive-in eatery. There was a pair of C3s; a beautiful '68, L79 (427 BBC tri-power) coupe, my wife Ami's 69 C3 vert, an anniversary C5 vert, and my Z.

I'm used to it by now, but the C3s gathered looky-loos like bees to honey-especially the BBC. But, the Z held her own, and there were several snapping pix of her in all her silver glory LT5. The C5...Ho, hum.

I followed Ami's C3 home, and she was turing that 350/350 loose on the back road blacktops. But, frisky as that 4-speed SBC is, headers and sidepipes n all, the Z would have barely opened the secondaries...if I still had them...to keep up. (Now I know how =Jeff= felt when he did the same thing when I was driving Ami's C3 on a Bloomington Gold Tour one day!) The difference in technology and what the two 350s put out is incredible!

Such fun!

P.

PS: I'm familiar with the SBC water pump when the seal starts to leak - coolant dripping at first and then squirting out of the drain hole on the bottom. But, yesterday, almost to the house, Ami's water pump suffered a catestrophic failure - resulting in what appears to be the bearing itself shattering (haven't got it off the car yet). The pully shaft wobbles violently so as to viabrate the entire front end of the car!

[LancePearson]

Originally Posted by mike100

I don't see a new engine architecture for the new Z06 or ZR1 models, but any new 'LT5' should be DOHC with all the active timing and manifold tricks.

Logic says LT5 should be our engine architecture or an update of it modernized as LT5 2 or B or some such. For that matter some of the very best balanced, fastest road handling cars are mid engine, rear wheel drive cars like McLaren, Ferrari and the vast majority are DOHC engines. If GM wants to continue as a dominant force someday they are going to have to be a bit more revolutionary, deviate from the two valve pushrod engine and its well known issues. They and Porsche continue to push 1950 thinking on engines and car architecture with electronics being the big changes and by making them bigger blocks of the same thing or sticking non natural aspiration pressure devices like superchargers on them. Seems kind of old fashioned to me despite the current ZR-1's fast 638hp 6.2 supercharged two valve pushrodder.

I think it would be really fun to see a mid engine in front of the rear wheels rear wheel drive Vette of about 450 hp that weighed around 1100 kg or so. It could fly around road courses anywhere in the world.

It's been a long time since I heard someone 25 years old talking about wanting to own a Corvette for whatever that's worth.

[LancePearson]

Paul, that sounds like a really fun day for you two. When we were up at Lance Miller's in his car collection with the Wazoo group a few weeks ago we all got to tour his family car collection. 95% Corvettes though there is a 2006 GT40 there and a Ferrari. The one which fascinated me the most was a white 1954 convertible with the Blue Flame Six engine in it, wire covered headlights. Immaculate. I wonder what that little beauty would auction for? A Calloway as well and many Corvette Challenge C4's as well. Quite a collection of double decker stored cars. Only car garage I've ever been in which had it's own bathroom for guests.....

[LancePearson]

off subject but here is the little car....just gorgeous. Would be a hoot and a half to drive something with that little 165 hp engine. I think it was 165 hp anyway. The storage system is in a small set of buildings with double decker racks. It is set up so that the motor which powers the racks can be moved from rack to rack to operate the lifts. Pretty clever to keep costs down. The cars are kept in heated, climate controlled space and are just immaculate. Jay Leno like!

[Hog]

Originally Posted by efnfast

The way I see it, they're just muddying the designations. LT-1 doesn't mean anything anymore because you don't know which engine is being reffered too.

Same could be said for Z R 1 unfortunatley.

peace
Hog

[BigJohn]

The trademarking is to keep KIA from calling their next car (The LT-5)!