List of GM engines

From Free net encyclopedia

(Redirected from GM engines)

This page chronicles the many automobile engines that General Motors has used in its various marques.

GM currently uses certain terminology to refer to groups of engines, but this terminology does not necessarily isolate families. In other words, not all of the Vortec engines share common ancestry.

In North America, GM uses universal three-character alphanumeric RPO codes to refer to a specific car option, including engine model. Even with 55 thousand distinct codes possible, many of these have been reused over the years, and new RPO codes are sometimes used for very similar engines, however.

GM LAAM (Latin America, Africa and Mid-East) and GM Europe uses four- to six-charecter SKU codes, such as CN22E, to represent family, displacement and engine features.

Unlike Chrysler and Ford, each GM division had its own line of engines until the 1970s. For this reason, making sense of GM engines can be difficult. For example, Buick, Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, and Pontiac each had a different 350 in³ V8 design!

Contents

[edit]

Diesel

The history of Diesel engines at General Motors has not been positive. In the 1970s, the company was unable to power its large cars and trucks with their emissions-strangled engines. Like many other companies, GM turned to Diesel power, directing the Oldsmobile division to develop a V6 and two V8 engines, to be shared with all divisions.

Due to the fact that they were based off of standard gasoline engine designs, Oldsmobile's diesel engines, the 5.7 L LF9 and 4.3 L LF7 V8s and 4.3 L LT6/LT7/LS2 V6, were notoriously unreliable, particularly in the earliest versions, though reliability had improved by the early 1980s. Although over one million were sold between 1978 and 1985, the failure rate of GM's engines ruined the reputation of Diesel engines in general in the United States market. Eventually, a class action lawsuit resulted in an arbitration system under the supervision of the Federal Trade Commission where consumers could claim 80% of the original cost of the engine in the event of a failure.

In the 1980 and 1990s GM produced the 6.2 L and 6.5 liter V8 Diesels for use in light trucks and in the HMMWV.

Today, GM uses Diesel engines from DMAX (for trucks) but offers no domestic Diesel passenger cars. General Motors' Opel division is one of the leading proponents of Diesel cars in Europe, however. Opel uses common rail direct injection engines designed and produced by Fiat S.p.A and Isuzu. Ownership of both designs was acquired by GM in 2005, and a new GM Powertrain division in Turin, Italy (home of Fiat) was founded to manage these assets. GM Daewoo recently licensed two common rail designs from VM Motori.

[edit]

Straight-3

[edit]

Straight-4

[edit]

Straight-5

[edit]

Straight-6

GM has produced a few families of straight-6 engines. The first was introduced 1929 to replace the straight-4 previously used in Chevrolet cars. It lasted until the 1970s in GM cars, and all the way until 1985 in Chevrolet and GMC trucks. A new straight-6 was introduced in 2002 as part of GM's Atlas truck engine program.

[edit]

Flat-6

General Motors produced just one flat-6 engine, the 1960s Chevrolet Corvair engine. This air-cooled aluminum engine was notable for many things, including being one of the first turbocharged engines in history.

[edit]

V6

General Motors was the pioneer of the V6 engine in the United States, putting the first American V6 car, the Buick Special's 198 in³ V6, on the road in 1962. GMC beat Buick to the punch, however, with their 1960 truck V6, which eventually grew to a massive 478 in³ (7.8 L). But the company quickly lost interest in the V6 concept, and sold the Buick design to Kaiser-Jeep in 1967. In the midst of the fuel crisis of the 1970s, GM realized that a V6 engine would be an excellent alternative to bulky straight-6 and large V8 engines, so the company bought the design back and launched what would eventually become the familiar 3800 line.

At that same time, the company began designing a 60° V6 for their new compact cars. This line started slowly, powering only the smallest cars. One notable version was the DOHC LQ1, designed with Lotus. The smooth and compact 60° engine has become GM's platform of the future, spawning the new global High Value family.

Other V6es came and went in recent decades, including the V8-derived Olds Diesel 4.3 and Vortec 4300 and Premium V-based LX5. The European Opel/Cadillac/Saturn 54° V6 has spawned the company's other future V6, the global High Feature DOHC engine.

[edit]

Straight-8

[edit]

V8

From the 1950s through the 1970s, each GM division had its own V8 engine family. Many were shared among other divisions, but each design is most-closely associated with its own division. Chevrolet had two different V8s, the big-block and small-block. Today, there are only three V8 engines produced by GM: Chevrolet's Generation IV small-block and big-block, and Cadillac's advanced DOHC V8, the Northstar.

GM later standardized on the later generations of the Chevrolet design:

Other GM V8 engines include the following:

[edit]

V12

Cadillac has produced just one V12 engine, in the 1930s. Since then, the company has twice prepared a new V12, but has not yet brought one into production.

[edit]

V16

Cadillac is a rarity in having produced two of only three production V16 engines in history:

[edit]

See also

Template:General Motors

Retrieved from "http://www.netipedia.com/index.php/List_of_GM_engines"