Posted on 10/24/2014 12:13:24 PM PDT by all the best
Mourn with me.
Cadillac – Cadillac! – no longer sells a single car powered by a V-8 engine. Or such will be the case in about two months, when 2014 fades to 2015. Come Jan. 1, all new Cadillac cars will be powered by fours or sixes. Some will be turbocharged. But none will larger than 3.6 liters.
The last of the V-8 Caddys – the (very) limited production CTS-V sedan/wagon – is being retired. There appears to be a replacement on deck for 2016, but the continued politically viability of V-8 engines within the system (so to speak) is shaky. Not because people don’t want the power. But because government demands “economy” – creating an impossible Catch 22 situation.
The 6.2 liter V-8 in the current (2014) CTS-V produces 556 magnificent horsepower – more horsepower than any ’60s-era muscle car (including the halo’d Chrysler 426 Street Hemi). But its Achilles Heel in this misbegotten age – in which government bureaucrats and political hacks decree car design via regulatory edicts as opposed to the freely expressed wishes of the people who buy the cars – is its hunger for fuel. The CTS-V’s EPA mileage stats are the modern-day equivalent of a racist joke caught on mike: 14 city, 19 highway.conan pic
Hear the lamentations of the women.
And so, GM – like every other automaker – is scrambling to “apologize” for its sins – atonement coming in the form of much smaller (but ironically only slightly more economical) not-V-8s such as the 3.6 liter V-6 that will be the mainstay powerplant in future Cadillac “V” (high-performance) vehicles.
Instead of 556 hp, 420 hp. But hey, 21 city and 31 highway will be your reward. Is it a fair exchange? The loss of 136 hp, two cylinders and 2.6 liters’ worth of engine in exchange for a 7 MPG uptick in city driving – and 12 on the highway?
I understand the new Ford Expedition will only come with the eco-boost V6.
No more V8. Not even an option.
Course it will have more torque and horsepower and get better gas mileage.
“and idiot would have to work at it to have a problem with the power available.”
Lol. You are not serious, are you?
My dad bought a new 1970 Eldorado with a 500 cubic inch, 425HP V8. The hood on that car was 9 ft long! He loved rolling up on the traditional muscle cars and leaving them in the dust at the light. All that weight sitting on a, front wheel drive car made for an awesome Boulevard dragster! No burn outs just a quick bark and raw power!
I love cars, performance, etc, but I’m not really sure what the point of something like a 700 HP Hellcat is on public roads. It’ll take you to license-shredding speeds in no time flat, and there’s no way it has enough tire on the ground to use all of it in the lower gears. Bragging rights, I guess. Not really much good for the track, either. Maybe drag racing?
I’d rather have a healthy amount of power (the 255 in my Murano is sufficient, although another 50-75 wouldn’t hurt) in a car that’s comfortable and handles and rides well. But then I’ve got a motorcycle for thrills, and even though it is far from the fastest (”only” about 95 RWHP, not 180 like the fastest production bikes) it will also deliver me to license-killing speeds very quickly.
Bookmark
“Contact patch”. About the size of the palm of your hand. Where the rubber meets the road.
But what you don’t take into account here, is that the ECM may have been tuned for the boost, but it wasn’t tuned to be “safe” at low speeds.
We hot-rodders can definitely build some scary cars, even from new stuff, but it’s very hard to build scary cars that seem harmless enough for the wife to drive, in your garage. Vehicle stability programs, traction management (and not just via braking, but throttle management & torque vectoring), etc. are all expensive to develop technologies we take for granted in stock vehicles.
If Toyota had made the Tundra with 505hp out the door of the dealership, I will bet it would have driven like a Buick Boat till you tipped in deep on the loud pedal.
Most cars are limited at low speeds and/or RPMs to prevent driveline damage. It wasn’t better alloys that allowed the big increases in horsepower in stock vehicles, it was software that kept the high-perf motors from tearing out the driveshafts, rearends, and transmissions :)
For an example of what all the dev money goes too, pull a new vehicle off to the side of the road, that has a lot of HP under the hood. Make sure the grass is damp and muddy. Now nail it to the floor before getting back onto the pavement. The computer will find every bit of available traction, and keep touching the edge of severe wheel-spin, and you will safely and directly go just about in the direction you aim.
That doesn’t happen in home built race cars.
Of course, the computer can’t keep you from sinking if it is severely muddy...
This works the same on ice for most cars. But often at least in NC, ice is so bad it doesn’t matter what you have, you may still not move, even with 4 wheels driven.
The maxim my Dad taught me: 4x4 just means you have a better chance of taking off, everybody has 4 wheels and brakes on each, stopping is the real kicker.
Yup, indeed. The flotation tires do just that. Float. Skid. Hydroplane. Anything but grip. I love them. But NOT on snow/wet roads.
My how our memories play tricks on us ...
“With todays technology the V6 could put out some serious horsepower for GM.”
Hell yeah. Some chick out there has a twin turbo v-6 Firebird (3.8 series II)that is putting out 600+ hp. Abbott Racing heads has a the same car, a daily driver, with only a cam, heads and exhaust that measures 273hp at the rear wheels. You just don’t need much more than a six today. But that won’t stop them from coming after them after they get rid of the bigger engines.
It’s simply an extension of the penis/bragging rights. No problem with that at all mind you. But thats all that much power is.
“Most cars are limited at low speeds”
I had not heard of this. Can you elaborate or provide a link
The biggest threat to six cylinder engines is the turbo-4 and turbo-3. A lot of these turbo 4 cars nowadays are not all that efficient in real world driving, but a turbo-4 is very good at gaming the EPA tests, which decide the numbers that go on the sticker.
Most of these engines are running enough boost, that if a hose clamp slipped off, your hood would probably sheer the hood latch off :)
Boost has to have equal amounts of fuel. Some of these 4’s are breathing better than big block V8 engines when they are at full boost.
Add to that, that a 4 banger is very inexpensive to manufacture in mass quantities, and I think the 6 cylinder’s days are numbered as well.
I welcome our electric overlords, once they have the battery tech sorted out (or Mr. Fusion is available). There would be no better way to tow a trailer than a electric pickup with so much grunt at the very start of the pedal range, and delivered so smoothly. I envy the CSX locomotives that pass my backyard daily :)
The valet mode type stuff is all I can figure.
And the RPM potential!
“It’s simply an extension of the penis/bragging rights. No problem with that at all mind you. But thats all that much power is.”
I see the same thing a lot with motorcycles. Some guys just have to have the latest, fastest bike, like the latest BMW S1000RR - almost 200 HP at the crank, but you’ll be over the speed limit before you get out of first.
I’m happy with my 105 crank HP bike - it’ll still do 0-60 in about 3.5 seconds (or less) and sub-12 second quarter miles, but most importantly it’s just as fast through corners (if not faster) as those more powerful bikes. Plenty fast enough to give me a thrill when I wind it out to redline through a couple of gears, while being less likely to kill me or cost me my license.
But like you, I don’t have a problem with people buying whatever they want. I do have a problem with some of the big diesel pickups around my place, just in terms of the amount of noise they make when their drivers step on it.
My favorite bike ever was a little ported/piped 79 Yamaha Rd400F Daytona special. 2 stroke street bike from hell. I think Satan personally authorized it ;) Could run with 650s of the day all day long and a dream in the corners.
PEAKY as hell powerband with the mods. But oh so FUN! ;)
Just drive some of the hot cars. You will notice a very mechanical point in the rev range, where the engine just suddenly “comes alive”. Some cars cover it better than others.
My own Nissan Titan, it’s obvious, and it happens at about 3KRPM. It’s like a different motor magically swaps with the one you took off with. I even know how they do it (controlled opening of the intakes to the second set of intake valves -— Nissan has forgone a cam phasor thus far, I guess in response to the problems Chevy and Ford both had with them in their FS-pickup V8s).
I also drive a Honda Civic iVTech K24. Its cam phasor is also dramatic, but occurs at 5KPRM. And the engine is so peaky that in 1st or second gear (six speed manual), you will slam into the rev limiter at 7200RPM if you aren’t ready for it. Never go above 5KPRM, and you would think you are driving a especially torquey economy car with good manners.
The only cars I have not driven, and don’t expect it to occur in, is the muscle cars with launch control. Even those will eventually break if you keep using it.
Also, I have owned one of the mighty Chevy LS1 motors in a 02 Z28. You could also tell it was very much present in that engine, it was so obvious that they were not allowing the motor to go full tilt until you got it into the 3KRPM range. It was a push valve motor without a cam phasor, so it’s not like it was a obvious transition. They just limited it in software, by playing with timing. You could mimick the effect full RPM range by putting 87 octane in the tank, which means they were doing it via timing retardation.
I am old enough to have owned a V8 carb car, it was my first. It had no “peak”, it just went up as high as it could, smooth as glass, but it probably wasn’t turning more than 200hp out of a 5.7L engine (inside of a 3 ton chassis).
A lot of the tunes out there “improve” low end drive ability by modifying the fuel and timing to regain that artificial limitation at the bottom end.
I would have loved to get my hands on an white RD350LC when I was in high school. I can’t recall if the “Elsie” had a power valve or not, which broadened the powerbands on those bikes quite a bit.
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