V8 not dead says GM

Amid all the hybrid hype and electric concept cars at this year's Detroit motor show, General Motors vice chairman Bob Lutz bucked industry convention and proudly declared that "the V8 is not dead".

He said hybrid and electric cars would likely account for no more than 5 per cent of total new vehicle sales over the next decade and that there were still plenty of uses for big, powerful engines "in the right vehicles".

"We do hybrids and electric vehicles because that basically is where the world is moving and our overseas subsidiaries will benefit from that," he told a group of journalists. "But we are still the world's largest producer of V8 engines and proud of it and have some truly excellent cars with V8 engines."

He went on to say: "The V8 engine is not dead, not by any means. There is plenty of potential left to make V8s more efficient. For instance there is a possibility for direct injection, cylinder shut down, there's still quite a bit of technology left that can be deployed to make them more fuel efficient."

He said the challenge was to make a V8 engine that had plenty of power and yet was relatively fuel-efficient.

"The ideal [performance] car … would be a great big V8 but consuming only 5L/100km (equivalent of a Toyota Prius). Ok, that's impossible right now, but ... the closer you can get to that combination obviously, the more market success you're going to have."

General Motors is understood to be working on a new V8 'smallblock' family, but Lutz would not reveal timing or what capacity the engines might be.

"The V8 is going to have to undergo a substantial transformation. It's going to need all new timing technology and a whole bunch of other stuff," he said.

"The GM smallblock has been like grandfather's axe where it's always been in the family for something like 100 years. Sometimes you change the blade and sometimes you change the handle, but never both at the same time. And because you never change both at the same time, it's still grandfather's axe."

In its performance catalogue alone GM has 6.0-litre, 6.2-litre, 6.2-litre supercharged and 7.0-litre V8s, giving GM the advantage of fitting the right engine to the right vehicle.

"We will not walk away from the performance car business," he said.

At the recent SEMA motor show in Las Vegas GM also unveiled a twin turbocharged version of the 3.6-litre V6 engine used in the Holden Commodore.

"It's not always going to be V8 but we're not walking away from V8."

He said the ability of its V8 engines to run on E85 fuel (unleaded blended with 85 per cent ethanol) would help make V8 power more viable for other vehicles such as pick-ups and SUVs.

"You get, say, 30 per cent less driving range per tank between refills but at least you still have the power and towing or carrying capacity that a big V8 enables. So the V8 isn't going anywhere."

The V8 news will no doubt come as a relief to Holden, which sells a 6.0-litre V8 version of the Commodore (pictured in SS form) and its performance car partner HSV sells a 6.2-litre V8 version. V8 sales account for approximately one in five Commodore sales; in 2008 they accounted for one in four.

Meanwhile Ford is not giving up on V8s either, although it has reduced the capacity of its most popular engine. Ford unveiled three new V8 engines at this year's Detroit motor show: the 5.0-litre V8 that will replace the 5.4-litre V8 in the Falcon in June 2010, a 6.2-litre V8 designed for use in the F Series pick-up, and a 6.7-litre turbo diesel V8 for its heavy duty vehicles.

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