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I'm not sure which era, or which detuning you are talking about, but the 500 cu in (8.2L !!!!) Cadillac engine in the El Dorado made 400 hp when it was introduc
by csours 9y ago
I'm not sure which era, or which detuning you are talking about, but the 500 cu in (8.2L !!!!) Cadillac engine in the El Dorado made 400 hp when it was introduced in 1970, and 190 hp in 1976, after several rounds of detuning for smog controls, among other reasons.
This chart is enough to make you cry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_V8_engine#500 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_V8_engine#500
Anyway, eventually engineers learned how to make engines that are highly efficient and have very low emissions, basically by making the things as complicated as sin.
For a good 10 years or so, all of these goodies they added (like Mass Airflow Sensors, etc) would fail in mysterious ways, and be very expensive to replace.
Now most of that stuff is pretty solid too.
A lot of opinion about car tech is set by stuff that is 10-20 years old, which is both fair and not fair. It's fair, because it's hard to tell how things will wear when they are new. It's not fair, because engineers have already fixed a lot of things that went wrong in the previous generation.
Anyway, Cadillac now has a 3.0L Turbo [0] that makes as much hp as the 8.2 from above.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GM_High_Feature_engine#LGW https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GM_High_Feature_engine#LGW
Disclaimer, I work for GM, but I'm on on any engine team.
- disiplus 9y agothats not fair. you are comparing sae gross 1970 to sae net 1976. sae gross is naked engine on a stand without any accessories. in the same wiki link you can find this for 1971. 365 brake horsepower (272 kW), or 235 horsepower (175 kW) in the new SAE net ratings
- csours 9y agoFair enough. It's still a very depressing chart.
- userbinator 9y agoI was mainly referring to the 50s-60s, when engines could normally be tuned to produce significantly more power than stock without huge decreases in longevity, because their mechanical parts were far stronger than required. The same goes for other powertrain parts (e.g. THM400 transmission.) after several rounds of detuning for smog controls, among other reasons. I doubt any of those "other reasons" were because the engine couldn't survive 400hp.
- taneq 9y ago'90s Japanese cars were much the same, you could generally increase the engine power by a factor of at least 1.5x - 2x with bolt-on mods and still keep things mostly reliable.
- knob 9y agoI just want to say: I owned a 1975 Cadillac the 500 ci engine. I wish I had never sold it, yet I am glad I did. The biggest engine ever in a production vehicle, until the second-gen Viper came around.