Daily Roddin’: 1990 Corvette ZR-1 Engine

No matter what parts you attach to a a car-be it transmission, suspension, aerodynamics, or fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror, it is only the engine that makes the beast move. Granted, there are few unnecessary parts to a vehicle-even the New Beetle has a reason for the vase and plastic flower attached to the dashboard-but without the engine, the heart of every vehicle, nothing moves and nothing happens.

This amazing specimen is the Corvette LT5 aluminum-block engine, the first dual-overhead cam V8 produced by General Motors. Actually, that’s not entirely true. GM tapped the recently purchased Lotus Group in England to develop this beast of a car, and handed production duties to Mercury Marine, the same folks that builds most of the boat motors found in smaller pleasure craft across North America.

The 375 horsepower engine was meant to turn a limited number of Corvettes into the “fastest production car in the world.” Although most will argue if it was, indeed, the world’s fastest car, it did set seven new records for endurance testing, including a 24-hour endurance record, travelling an average speed of 175.885 MPH all day and all night, a total distance of 4,221.256 miles of being driven with the throttle wide-open.

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