The new 600+ Hp Sedan war

[Bruce Nunnally]

We keep hearing rumors that the new 2009 CTS-V will have a 550+ hp LS9 6.2L S/C V8 (the low-hp version of the new ZR1 Corvette engine) to combat the current 507 HP BMW M5 and 400hp BMW M3. I continue to think that putting the top vette engine in the CTS-V is the right way to go for that market. I think a lot of the CTS-V owners enjoy it holding the current title of 4-door Corvette.

Worldcarfans.com notes that these cars are on the road now:

BMW M5 507hp

Mercedes E63 AMG 511hp (may be 544hp in 09)

Audi RS6 TT V10 580hp

And apparently the NEXT M5 may have twin turbo's for its V10 and make around 600 hp also:

http://www.worldcarfans.com/9070910.004/bm...rototypes-spied

So in 2010 there may be several sports sedans with around 600hp, a power level previously reserved for racing cars and rockets

[Texas Jim]

It sure would be fun to drive one of them on twisty mountain roads for an hour or two.

Cadillac needs to go ahead and put the good engine in the CTS and beat all of them and be done with it. I love rockets... especially with 4 wheels.

[Cadillac Jim]

GM is perfectly capable of selling a 600 hp 572 cid big block in anything, and in fact they sell this engine as a the ZZ572 crate engine. World Castings sells a 632 cid 900 hp Chevy big block crate engine, and an interesting 427 cid small block rated at 550 hp normally aspirated, and weighing only 350 pounds -- the same as the Northstar -- through Summit and others. The small block is a street engine and comes with a two-year, 24,000 mile warranty. Put that in your 1962 Bel Air and see if you can keep the rest of the drive line together through the quarter mile, and if you can stop it before you run out of track at the end.

Mercedes decided to start selling some of this stuff through their in-house AMG shop through Mercedes dealers, and had TV advertisements about the monster in the garage. That broke the unspoken rule among automakers to keep it toned down so that the life expectancy of the 19-year-old valet parking dude or Jiffy-Lube test driver wasn't significantly impacted.

The Quad 4 HO engine at 2260 cc and up to 195 hp had a specific output of up to 86 hp/liter, which maps to 360 hp for 4.2 liters. We all know about the blown Northstar in the STS-V with its 469 hp and torque that is quite high for that horsepower rating.

We also know about that Englishman's auto enthusiast TV show that raves over the M5, but points out at very great length in a video posted here that it isn't much of an around-town daily driver.

Of course, we all also know about occasional manufacturer's ploys such as Ford once putting their Yamaha-built 24-valve HO V6 from the Taurus SHO into a Fiesta and selling 500 of them so that they could race it as a production model; I wonder who bought those things and where they are now. Most "limited production" models are either for publicity or for some similar purpose, with little or no service or parts availability, and no trained technicians at the dealer in Athens, GA. But when you make these things available to anyone who cares to order and pay for one, at a reasonable price, you need to sell a safe, warrantied, emissions-compliant car. The only manufacturer that I have ever known to be able to do that well is GM; apparently they got the hard knocks out of the way during the Zora Arkus-Duntov years. The test is to see them on the streets when they are 5+ years old.

[GreenMachine]

Any news on the High Feature V8? I know the local GM powertain plant is currently in redesign mode to start building the "New Northstar" or the replacement. We'll probibly soon enough not refer to any GM engine by a big bold name but instead be stuck with letters and numbers, sure LS7 or LSX has a ring to it, LQ9 sounds kinda funny.

2008 GM engines:

http://media.gm.com/us/powertrain/en/produ.../2008/08car.htm

I will soon own a vehicle with a "Legacy" engine, no more 3800 Supercharged.

[Bruce Nunnally]

I have heard the new engine referred to as the Ultra V8, and it is a 5L V8 version of the 3.6L V6 one might say. No recent news about it, but I guess it is on the way for the 2010 cars.