- GM is investing $900 million to create a new family of V8 engines.
- A new report claims two displacements are currently in development.
- One engine targets trucks while the other is planned for Corvettes.
For a while, it looked like the American V8’s days were numbered as Ford, Toyota, and Stellantis all dropped powerful new six-cylinder engines into bays that traditionally were home to more pistons.
But GM is sticking with what it knows works and is whipping up a family of new V8 engines that will debut in 2027 and live well into the next decade.
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That much we kind of knew, plus the fact that GM was spending almost $900 million to make it happen. The General hasn’t revealed much more than that, but this week, a report claimed to offer some more detail on the makeup of this new engine family.
The next-gen V8s will come in two distinct sizes: a basic 5.7-liter version for use in trucks like the Silverado 1500, which is alleged to be around 6 percent more efficient than the engine it replaces.
For context, the current Silverado’s V8 options are a 5.3-liter V8 with 355 hp (360 PS) and a 6.2 pushing out 420 (426 PS).
But performance-minded fans will be more interested in the 5.7’s big brother. Packing 6.6 liters of swept volume, per the GM Authority report, it’s designed to work in speed-focused vehicles like the Corvette, which relies on a pushrod 6.2 with and without hybrid help, and a very different 5.5-liter, DOHC flat-plane crank V8 available in plain, turbocharged and turbocharged and hybridized forms.
How about a Raptor R rival?
But it would be great to see the 6.6-liter V8 turn up in the Silverado and other trucks. Unlike Ford and Ram, GM doesn’t have any dedicated high-performance gas pickups right now, and both of its rivals are making noises about doubling down on enthusiast vehicles.
Although we don’t know any technical details about the new engines, we can be sure they’ll be aluminum and engineered to work with hybrid tech where needed. Plus, you’d expect GM to finally ditch the pushrods, wouldn’t you?
It’s also a given that engineers will create multiple different versions of those 5.7 and 6.6-liter V8s to cover the many bases GM’s current 5.3-, 6.2-, and 6.6-liter V8s handle.
GM, for its part, is staying tight-lipped about the capacity rumors, telling GM Authority that “we can’t comment on speculation about displacement.”
Let’s hope those new V8s are more reliable than their current engines, which are the subject of a gigantic recall due to manufacturing defects.
