The Last GM Big-Block V-8 Rolls Off the Line 525
DesScorp writes "It's the end of an era in auto technology, as the very last big block V-8 engine from GM has rolled off the production line. The L18 engine was the last variant of an engine that had been in continuous production for over 50 years. The big blocks powered everything from the classic muscle cars of the '60s and '70s to heavy-duty trucks today. From the Buffalo News: 'When GM said last June the L18 would be eliminated by year's end, the announcement triggered another show of devotion to the product. Some customers ordered two years' worth of L18s, to put on the shelf for future use.' More than 5 million big blocks have been produced over the engine's history. The final big block engine to come off the line in Tonawanda, NY is headed for the GM Heritage Center in Sterling Heights, MI."
big blocks (Score:2, Interesting)
Had a 454 Suburban (Score:4, Interesting)
the joy's of running a big block (Score:2, Interesting)
so goes another point of history, maybe for the better, but there was something about when you opened the hood and you saw one, now you look under the hood and it's confusing. I guess age is getting the better of me LOL.
well I guess you'll all start wondering what it was like to have 550hp+, and punching it, there is just a sound, not like any other sound, it's the sound of power, raw, and tamed by only your nerve as you head down the strip. light to light, pole to pole, neck to neck, blasting the traps at 145mph+ in mid 10's, then, only after the trophy is handed to you, you drive your car home, listening to the sweet rumble.
I never had the balls to put slicks on, always felt that control at that level of speed was worth my life. lost a few - won a few, made me money while I was in school and never lost on the street ( nor was I caught ) and earn the respect of my peers in the parking lot. Had geek cred - grease in my blood - and I loved my "RAT" ... what more can you ask for when your 17 and it's 1983 ( well maybe DEC-VAX mainframe )
anyway thanks for reading
old friend (Score:2, Interesting)
good bye my old friend, you will be missed.
as a gear head, not much is more impressive than a big ol rat motor sticking out of the hood of your car. I will really miss this motor, gas hog or not
Re:Innovation! (Score:3, Interesting)
Regardless of "better" designs, we're witnessing an end of an era here, considering this format has survived for 50 out of the last 100 years of the automobile. A sad day indeed.
What's sad is that GM had to almost go out of business before they'd finally acknowledge that such an inefficient engine type was obsolete. The handwriting's been on the wall since 19 ****ing 74 [wikipedia.org], for crisakes. But GM couldn't change its mindset, and instead sat and twiddled their thumbs while the Japanese took away their business.
I'm reminded of Sun's inability to shift to commodity processors. But then, I'm an embittered ex-Sun employee...
Re:Innovation! (Score:4, Interesting)
I suspect GM kept at it this long for a good business reason: tinkerers loved that kind of engine: relatively easy to self-repair and powerful. Now the only choices will be wimpy or too complex to self-service. The Duke boys will have to rely much more on Cooter now.
Re:Innovation! (Score:5, Interesting)
Big Block is Meaningless (Score:1, Interesting)
GM produces a 7 liter motor, the same size as the old big block 427. The 427 was a wicked powerful motor. The new engine is better. Who cares if one was called the big block. Power is the real important number. Weight and compactness are important as well. Even displacement is meaningless in the forced induction era. The term big block is meaningless. The performance cars and heavy duty trucks of today are far and away superior to their forebears in every way.
Regards,
Jason
Re:I just pictured an oil sheik... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:DNS-and-BIND is a copypasta Jew (Score:4, Interesting)
That looks to be output from the Complaint Generator [pakin.org], so it involved less effort to create than your post did.
It's probably a reference to the fact that DNS-and-BIND has used that exact post before. [slashdot.org]
Re:At least 10 years too late. (Score:3, Interesting)
In Europe we also have GM. They're called Opel/SAAB here.
All Opel/SAAB cars have modern competitive diesel engines. So apparently, GM DID invest in new tech.
The question is, why did they not sell those engines/cars in the US?
Maybe because US consumers were not interested? I'm not being arrogant here, that's a real question. I really don't understand.
gas at $6.62 / gallon (Score:3, Interesting)
By crickey! mileage explains why we don't get these big engines in Europe. Just did a quick calculation, my local garage charges GBP1.09 / litre for standard (95 octane) petrol/gasoline, that's approx $6.62 a US gallon. Would explain why these engines are very cool and impressive but you don't see them round here .. What kind of capacity fuel tanks do vehicles with these engines have?
Re:Innovation! (Score:5, Interesting)
Anymore this sounds just like a "GET OFF MY LAWN" comment.
I enjoy maintaining my own vehicle, and while I get the WTF moment when a part costs more than I'm expecting to pay (for instance, Ford wants 600$ for a light controller. 4 relays, a few transistors and caps... WHY!!!) I still notice that a new car has similar components to any other car out there.
Yes, it's a little complicated by the electronics now and then, but you still have a motor, a transmission, battery tires oil younameit it's all there, user serviceable. Even the steering components haven't changed much - and things you do more often are still accessable. Ball joints, brake pads and rotors, oil, wheel bearings etc.
With all the features cars offer today, I've got no complaints.
Re:Innovation! (Score:1, Interesting)
It's called product inertia. Customers purchased the same products they were familiar with, even if the product was not meeting their needs. Slowly, along the peripherals of this consumer group, you loose a handful, but as you loose them, your circle of customers erodes. Eventually, this slight peripheral edge-bleed becomes a torrent, unless you spot it early enough.
The big block V8 is a symtom of GM's unwillingness to address its customer base needs. If it was a specialty item, as the Mopar 426 Hemi is, it would be one thing. But GM kept putting it into products it was ill-suited for. End result, they kept slowly loosing their customer base as they migrated to companies which sold what they sought.
GM had the opportunity in the 1990's to create a true tiered product lineup, to better address the needs of their customers by hyper-focusing. Instead, it tried to be all things to all customers in all brands. The result is the mess in which GM finds itself today. Let us explore a moment.
Chevrolet remains the catchall, a bit of everything. Buick is the luxury lineup, midsize, full size, midrange SUV/Crossover. Cadillacs is the premiere lineup, full sized, large sports car, and large SUV. Pontiac is for sports enthusiasts, ranging from subcompact hyperperformance to full-sized sports cars. Saturn evolves into two markets, the hyper-efficient as well as the customizable, a combination of the low-level from Toyota w/ Scion. (low-cost cars which are customizable) Saab remains as it is, keep it a unique entity for those of the precular taste. Hummer should have focused on being the new, improved Jeep, quit the "H2, H3" bs, and instead focus on extreme utility. Chevrolet then becomes a top-to-bottom brand, pulling samples from each of the other lineups.
Why didn't this happen? Inner-company politicing prevented any one brand from differentializing itself from any other. "Buick has one, we need to have one!"
Re:At least 10 years too late. (Score:2, Interesting)
Contra the other response to your post, the big block to these in the US are two-fold, and neither is availability. Diesel is widely available, especially along highways. Not as much as gasoline, but not nearly rare enough to be problematic.
The first of the big reasons is GM itself. The first diesels they brought out in the US were steaming piles of crap. Expensive, smokey, loud, and didn't last. The perception this left of diesels in the US still hasn't quite gone away, and probably won't completely until everyone who's ever owned or seen one of the old Oldsmobile diesels has died.
The second is California. More specifically, CARB, the California state agency that sets emission standards for the state. They hate diesel, and set the emission standards for diesel engines much more strictly than for gasoline engines. Since several other stats copy the CARB standards, not meeting those standards means you're locked out of over half the US market. It's only been the last couple of years that the technology has advanced to the point where meeting them was even possible. Between ULSD (which was late coming to the US), and either urea or more advanced diesel engine techniques like direct injection, there are a few now available in the US market. (VW Jetta and Golf, Audi A3, BMW 335d, and a couple Mercedes models. That's it.)
As a side point to this, it's extremely expensive to certify an engine for US use. Since diesel is seen as a minor niche market (see point one above) most manufacturers aren't bothering to do it.
Given that VW is having problems keeping up with demand for the Jetta and Golf TDI, maybe this will change in a couple years, after the other manufacturers catch on. I'm not holding my breath.
Which is a real pity. I'm kind of in the market for a new car, and I really want a eurospec Civic i-CTDi. Unfortunately, Honda isn't bringing their diesel out in the US at all. They were going to do so in the Acura TSX, but then couldn't get the emissions quite down with the automatic transmission (and the US loves its slushboxes) without a urea system. So they aren't. Which ticks me off, because I want the Civic. Smaller and lighter than the TSX, so the engine could meet the emissions standard. And if not, they could still do it up like the Civic SI, which is manual only anyway. Grrr. If only the local VW dealers weren't incompetent assholes...
Re:Innovation! (Score:5, Interesting)
This huge old engine was excellent for towing, very nearly as strong as GM's large pickup truck diesel engine and far cheaper for both GM to build and purchasers to buy. High RPM performance was a joke, but this was built for running below 4000 RPMs, which is normal for an engine used to tow. This is a case where GM did something right, and sold something that customers in the target segment wanted to buy.
The problem with a tiered product lineup is that you divide your resources in research, marketing, advertising, and design too far. Toyota grew from nothing to a juggernaut of the US market with just two brands: Toyota and Lexus. They only added Scion recently. Honda bit off a big chunk of the domestic manufacturer's market share with just Honda and Acura. Nissan has just Nissan and Infiniti. Hyundai has just Hyundai and Kia, and only now that they're highly successful are they considering a separate luxury brand.
Ford has made an amazing turnaround in product competitiveness and desirability in the past four years, and they did it by selling Aston Martin, Jaguar, and Land Rover, cutting down their stake in Mazda, and reducing their number of Mercury models. Now they just have Ford, Lincoln, a bit of Mercury, and Volvo and Volvo is rumored to be for sale. GM is in the process of shutting down or selling Saturn, Hummer, Saab, and Pontiac and it has sold its pieces of Isuzu, Suzuki, and Subaru. The only reason Buick was kept is that it's GM's most successful brand in China. The only reason GMC trucks was kept is that most Buick dealerships are Buick/GMC dealerships.
GM management is finally focusing on building 30 decent products spread across four product lines (Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, Caddillac) instead of 80 substandard products spread across twelve product lines, which was the mess they had in 2001.
Re:Hilbert Space Cadet (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Innovation! (Score:4, Interesting)
how about this - in NC you can't pass inspection if you have a check engine light code active.
even i that code is a dealer only code
even if the car runs fine and would even pass emissions if they used the sniffer
dealer wants 85$ just to read the code out. and 90% of the time it is a set of things that can cause it and are dealer only parts.
it has gotten to the point that you can't even get shop manuals for newer cars.
and with the way ODB ties every thing together - that 600$ ford part is going to be the only one that might work - where as in my older cars i can wire it up the way i want so that it works, using parts of my choice.
Re:Innovation! (Score:3, Interesting)
"fm6 does not like to work on his own car; therefore, powerful, easily-serviceable engines should not exist. You can't argue with logic like that."
He will make a fine customer...
I'm a mechanic, so I'm fine with difficult-to-service engines that I don't own. Customers who fap to techno-complexity they don't understand are the same from computers to cars and trucks.
Even if you never touch a wrench you pay for complexity when you buy the vehicle, and when you buy insurance you pay for the other fellow.
Note that many modern engines are not worth rebuilding or even repairing after a few years. What dealers do to rebuild used cars is harvest drivetrains from wrecks and install them in vehicles whose engines have problems. It's not even worth doing head gaskets on most engines when you have access to wrecks, but the poor fellow who needs a top end job on his own vehicle pays out the arse because of the labor complex systems require.
Big block Chevrolets have always been in such demand that they rarely go to the shredder and don't stay in salvage long. Not everyone needs a large V-8, but the tens of thousands who do will keep the aftermarket and salvage business going. It is possible to make smaller engines that don't suck to service, but that isn't much of a priority because that's the customers problem.