I still don't agree about your analysis of the typical luxury car buyer. Most luxury car buyers seem to be just like the rest of the buying car public. The buyers care more about stuff like heated seats than they do about what type of engine the car has.

If luxury car buyers were only buying the latest and greatest engines, Mercedes managed to hold on pretty well a few years back with only SOHC 3v engines compared to their competitions DOHC 4v counterparts. Seems to me Mercedes still had no problem selling with their "less than superior" design.

 

Not enough bore spacing, same problem with the Mod motors, for more displacement and I don't think there is any more stroke spacing.

 

Most people don't know a whole lot about geology, but try to convince your wife or girlfriend that a synthetic diamond is just as good as a genuine one.

 

I agree with ZaphodBeeblebrox on this. I think you guys should drive both before coming to a final conclusion. I own both as well (STS and a T/A), and they "are" entirely two different animals. In regular driving the N* feels very broad in the powerband. The LSX feel more sluggish down low. Now kick it down and a whole world of hurt happens. Trust me I love my LS1 yet, I feel the N* is more appropriate in my Caddy.

 

Like I said in my last post a couple pages back they are going the DI route on the Northstars, Russtang I understand where you are coming from, but the PRESS would not praise the Lx engine no matter how good it was in this type of car.

Believe or not most lux car buyers will do some research before buying a car, and car mags is their number 1 source of info. For exp. my grandfather could not tell you the diff. between a dohc and pushrod or "cam in block" new gm speak for pushrods.

Yet he has some car mags of five best lux cars or something like that, and if the car mag says this lx engine has great power and is smooth but use old tech design, while another car in the test has this new direct injection and vvt and really smooth and get good gas milage. he will look at first cause THEY will make a big deal with its own side bar on di and vvt etc.

 

But buyers definitely do read product reviews, and as noted above Caddy would get slammed by every single one of them for using a pushrod motor in a mainstream luxury car, justified or not. That alone might be enough to prevent some potential buyers from going down to the dealership to form their own opinions.

Also, you can just imagine what car salesmen from competing dealerships would say when the buyer cross-shops other marques. Probably something like "and Cadillac uses the same old Chevrolet V8 motor that they had back in 1955, whereas we have totally modern DOHC blah blah blah".

Let's face it, the luxury market (whether it be cars, clothes, jewellery, or whatever) is about wants, not needs. Image plays a huge part of this, so if someone thinks he's going to look inferior or have to defend his purchase decision to his peers, he's probably going to think twice no matter how well it performs in the end.

 

Thanks you hit the nail right on the head.

 

Since RussStang and I agree to disagree about luxury buyers and their "awareness" of what they're buying, let's take this a step beyond....

Do we even know if it is possible to smooth out a pushrod V8 to current Northstar (and beyond) levels of NVH? Further, does it make sense to do this from a cost standpoint? This motor would see work in even HD trucks. Think HD truck buyers are willing to pay a nice premium for a motor that doesn't even sound like it's running at idle? Think Camaro buyers want a motor that you can't hear at idle? Now we're talking about 2 different pushrod V8's...and so it goes....

 

Great analogy



The Colorado’s I5 is a great example of people not liking something because of a number or letter. The '07 5 cyl. will put out 242HP which is more than Dodge, Ford, and Toyota V6 engines and it will have 52 more HP than the S10 4.3L V6, yet people still complain about the lack of a V6 even though the #'s are almost identical to GMs own 3.9L HV V6. If Colorado replaced the 5 cyl. with a 240HP 3.9L no one would complain. It is all perception, why should you care if it is a 240HP/240tq V6 or 242HP/241tq 5cyl. as long as gas and acceleration are the same You shouldn't, yet people do.

Most people wouldn't know from driving if there car had a 5.3L or a 4.6L Northstar, but you know a lot of luxury buyers are going to go for the N* just because it has more valves and gets the same HP from less displacement.

 

I understand what you are saying, but it wouldn't be two totally different v8s, unlike the LSx engines and the Northstars. I am not saying my plan has complete merit, but I am not willing to right off a luxury pushrod motor simply because it is assumed no one would give it the time of day.

A well balanced and blueprinted SBC will run pretty damn smooth. With enough R&D, I don't see why it couldn't be possible for GM to build a smooth running OHV engine.

 

I think if BMW put a pushrod in the M5, the press would be telling us how smart BMW was, what all the advantages are, and probably how BMW invented the pushrod

 

Let's try a different tack.

I think that one of the problems the Lincoln LS had was that its engines were at the bottom of the market in terms of horsepower for both their V6 and V8. Of course, they had to be underneath Jaguar, and Jag was next lowest.

Conversely, the Infiniti G35 had more power than everyone else. If Infiniti had released a 220hp G30, I don't think it would have been anywhere near as successful.

Now, GM is cutting back on expenses. The N* is falling behind. How much will it cost to keep pace? How much improvement could they make to the pushrod for luxury applications if they spent 1/5th the amount that it would cost to improve the N* to class pacing standards?

It's not a question of how much smoother a '98 Caddy is compared to a '98 Camaro. If I'm shopping for a sports luxury car this fall, I perceive a 320hp STS V8 versus a 382hp E550, a 380hp GS430, and a 360hp 550i. With the Escalade engine in an STS, I would perceive a 403hp STS. Now maybe Cadillac sells more cars with a 320hp N* than it would with a 403hp VVT 6.2, because people count valves and camshafts. I count hp and torque and the 403hp VVT wins there and beats the compeition too. GM counts millions of $$, and it will take hundreds of those to catch the N* up to the LS-series pushrods as well as the German and Japanese competition versus the 6.2 in the parts bin.

Is it really impossible to improve the smoothness of the pushrod engines beyond the GTO? I thought that the Tahoe/Escalade engines were tuned to be smoother than the sporty engines. What about a special assembly line with premium parts with extra care taken for balancing, etc.? I'm not suggesting that you take an engine out of a GTO and stick it into a Cadillac without modification.

 

I think there may be more truth in this statement then you may have intended.

 

Plenty of good points made here. I don't see why some people think it would be impossible to iron out a GM pushrod engine into a much smoother running engine. I would say power talks more than camshafts do.

 

Seems to me like you are the one who is not listening.

Someone is reading the magazines because there are about a billion of them in circulation. You loose either way, heres why.

Luxury enthusiast will laugh at pushrods. People who want a luxury car and don't know what it is will here the others laughing and run away. Luxury cars are about status, and it takes a lot less to break it, then it does to build it.

Corvette, GT and Viper all outperform their import counterparts and usually do it for substantially less. At the end of the day its still a ChevyFordDodge, not a BeamerLexusMercedes.

What you are suggesting is certainly POSSIBLE and FEASIBLE, but that doesen't make it a good idea.

(GMs $$$ + Cost of N*) - (Customers who ran away + Ads trying to get them back) =