Friends of the Gilmore Car Museum

10/15/2026

Louis Chevrolet put a V8 in a car thirty eight years before the small-block.

The Series D arrived for 1917 with 288 cubic inches, a ninety degree vee, cast iron cylinders on an aluminium crankcase, and around 36 horsepower at 2,700 RPM. Cadillac had introduced the first mass produced American V8 in 1915, and Chevrolet was going after the same buyer.

That was the plan, and it lasted about eighteen months.

In May 1918 Chevrolet became part of General Motors, and everything changed immediately. Not because the engine failed, and not because customers rejected it.

General Motors had a structure. Cadillac sat at the top and built eight cylinder cars. Buick served the upper middle. Oakland and Oldsmobile filled the space below. Chevrolet was brought in to fight Ford at the bottom of the market, and that meant cheap, simple, and built in enormous numbers.

A V8 had no place in that assignment. It cost too much to make, and selling one would have meant competing with Cadillac and Buick inside the same company.

So the Series D was cancelled after 1918 with fewer than five thousand built.

Chevrolet then spent the next thirty seven years building four cylinder and six cylinder cars, and the Stovebolt six became the company’s identity.

The V8 did not come back until 1955, and when it did it came back as the cheapest V8 in America rather than the most expensive one.

That is the part worth sitting with. Chevrolet had a V8 before most people had electricity at home, and the corporation took it away.

10/15/2026

The L88 commands the magazine covers. The L71 Tri-Power attracts restoration money. The ZL1 brings extraordinary auction prices. But the L72 was the 427 that Chevrolet actually built for customers in meaningful numbers. Introduced for the 1966 model year, it was the first Mark IV 427 offered to the public and the most powerful production engine in Chevrolet’s lineup that year. It found its way into Corvettes, Impalas, Caprices, Bel Airs, and Biscaynes by the thousands, while the L88 was installed in just 20 Corvettes and the ZL1 eventually found its way into only 69 Camaros. The L72 was the big-block an ordinary buyer could order through a regular Chevrolet dealership, provided the checkbook could handle the price. There was no need for a special racing connection or an almost mythical factory option. It was a production engine with a serious reputation, delivering a factory-rated 425 horsepower from 427 cubic inches.
When Chevrolet first introduced the L72, it advertised the engine at 450 horsepower. The rating was later reduced to 425 horsepower, despite no corresponding change to the engine itself. No components were replaced, and no mechanical adjustments transformed the original combination into something different. The change happened on paper, not under the hood. Such rating strategies were familiar in the 1960s, when manufacturers sometimes managed advertised output to navigate corporate policies and horsepower politics. General Motors had an internal guideline discouraging advertised ratings above one horsepower per cubic inch, although some engines were handled as special cases. At 450 horsepower from 427 cubic inches, the L72 exceeded that benchmark. Lowering the published figure to 425 brought the rating back in line without requiring the engineers to change what they had built. The engine remained the same formidable piece of hardware. Only the number in the brochure changed.
Look at the L72’s specifications alongside the L71 Tri-Power, and the family resemblance becomes obvious. Both used a cast-iron block with four-bolt main caps, a forged-steel crankshaft with hardened journals, forged-steel connecting rods, and forged-aluminum domed pistons delivering an 11.0:1 compression ratio. Both relied on a solid-lifter camshaft with the same lift and duration, rectangular-port cast-iron cylinder heads with large valves, and an aluminum dual-plane intake manifold. The critical difference was the carburetion. The L72 used a single Holley 780-CFM four-barrel carburetor, while the L71 employed three Holley two-barrel carburetors in its celebrated Tri-Power arrangement, with a combined advertised airflow of 1,282 CFM. Chevrolet rated the L71 at 435 horsepower, ten more than the L72’s published 425. That was the essential distinction between the two engines: one four-barrel versus three two-barrels, with the rest of the fundamental combination remarkably similar. The L72 delivered big-block performance without the additional complexity of the Tri-Power setup.
The L72’s legacy reached another level in 1969, when it became central to Chevrolet’s Central Office Production Order program. Performance dealers such as Fred Gibb and Don Yenko used the COPO system to obtain powerful 427-equipped Camaros and Chevelles that ordinary ordering channels and General Motors’ engine-placement policies would otherwise have restricted. The COPO 9561 Camaro, fitted with the L72 427, became one of the defining factory-built muscle cars of the era, with surviving examples commanding substantial sums at auction. The COPO Chevelle is rarer still. Yet the engine behind these legendary machines was not the exotic L88 or the scarce aluminum-block ZL1. It was the production 427 that Chevrolet had already developed, sold, and supported through its dealer network. Four hundred and twenty-five horsepower, one four-barrel carburetor, solid lifters, and a reputation built on real-world availability. The L72 may not receive the same attention as its more glamorous relatives, but it helped make the 427 legend accessible. It was not the rarest big-block Chevy. It was the one that proved a production engine could be extraordinary.

10/15/2026

In America the Falcon was a compact. A small, cheap car for people who did not want a full-size Ford, with a 144 or 170 cubic inch six under the bonnet and nothing much expected of it.

In Australia it became the main car the company sold.

That changed everything. An Australian Falcon was heavier, carried more, towed more, and spent its life on roads between towns that are further apart than most Americans imagine. The engines that were adequate in Michigan were not adequate there.

So Ford Australia built its own.

The 221 cubic inch six does not appear anywhere in the American range. The Americans went 144, 170, 200, 250. Australia went 188 and 221, sizes that exist nowhere else, developed because the local cars needed them.

The 221 made 135 horsepower, which was standard equipment in the Fairmont and an option on the Falcon and Falcon 500.

And the badge on the air cleaner marks a change of its own. From the XT of 1968, Ford Australia stopped quoting engines in cubic inches and started quoting them in litres, years before America went anywhere near metric. So the same engine that would have been called a 221 in Detroit is a 3.6 Litre Six in Melbourne.

The rest is familiar. Cast iron block and head, one camshaft in the block, two valves per cylinder, a single barrel carburetor, and a reputation for simply not stopping.

Underneath it is the same architecture as the American Falcon six. The difference is what Ford Australia did with it once they had the freedom to decide for themselves.

10/15/2026

10/15/2026

Before March 9, 1932, owning a V8 generally meant buying a Cadillac, Lincoln, or another expensive luxury automobile. Eight-cylinder power was a privilege reserved for wealthy motorists, far beyond the reach of most American families. Then Henry Ford, at 68 years old, decided that had to change. He ordered his engineers to develop an affordable V8 that could power the least expensive Ford in the showroom. His team warned that producing such an engine at a mass-market price would be extraordinarily difficult. Ford refused to back down. The result was the Ford Model 18, introduced in 1932 with a flathead V8 and a base price of $460. A contemporary Cadillac V8 could cost $2,695. Ford had taken eight-cylinder power out of the luxury market and placed it within reach of farmers, mechanics, salesmen, and even criminals who needed a fast getaway. American automotive culture would never be the same.
The breakthrough wasn't the V8 configuration itself. Cadillac had already been producing V8 engines since 1914. Ford's achievement was making one affordable to manufacture on a massive scale through an innovative single-piece block-and-crankcase casting. Earlier V8 designs often relied on multiple block sections bolted together, increasing manufacturing complexity and assembly costs. Ford's engineering team, including Carl Schmaltz, Ray Lard, and Emil Zoerlein, developed a casting process using carefully arranged internal sand cores to produce the engine's main structure as one piece. That manufacturing advance helped make the economics of a mass-market V8 possible. The engine also used a sidevalve arrangement, with the intake and exhaust valves positioned in the block beside the cylinders rather than overhead in the cylinder heads. A gear-driven camshaft operated the valves directly, eliminating pushrods, rocker arms, and a separate overhead-valve mechanism. The flat cylinder heads were comparatively simple covers. Fewer moving parts and a straightforward design helped keep manufacturing, assembly, and maintenance costs under control.
The original 221-cubic-inch Flathead produced 65 horsepower at 3,400 rpm, with a modest 5.5:1 compression ratio. Those figures might seem unremarkable today, but the engine gave ordinary motorists smooth eight-cylinder performance at an accessible price. The Model 18 outsold the four-cylinder Model B by more than two to one, and Ford promoted the new powerplant with the slogan “The greatest thrill in motoring.” By 1934, Ford had reclaimed the American sales crown from Chevrolet. That same year, outlaw Clyde Barrow sent Henry Ford a handwritten letter praising the cars he drove, writing, “While I still have got breath in my lungs I will tell you what a dandy car you make.” The Flathead's combination of affordability, speed, and durability had earned a reputation that reached well beyond respectable motorists. By 1935, output had risen to 85 horsepower. The family eventually expanded to include 221-, 239-, and 255-cubic-inch versions, along with the smaller 136-cubic-inch V8-60. More than 16 million Flathead V8s were produced in the United States between 1932 and 1953, with production continuing in other markets into the mid-1950s.
The Flathead was not without flaws. Its exhaust gases passed through passages in the block around the cylinders, creating heat-management problems under heavy loads. Early engines could suffer from thin cylinder walls and cracking, while the original poured main bearings were replaced by shell-type bearings in 1937. The sidevalve layout also restricted airflow at high engine speeds, limiting its potential compared with more modern overhead-valve designs. But those weaknesses did little to diminish its influence. After World War II, returning servicemen with mechanical skills, limited budgets, and a desire for speed found Flatheads everywhere—in used-car lots, wrecking yards, and inexpensive project cars. An aftermarket industry grew around the engine, with companies and builders such as Edelbrock, Offenhauser, Thickstun, and Navarro developing cylinder heads, intake manifolds, camshafts, and superchargers. Engineer Zora Arkus-Duntov even developed his celebrated Ardun overhead-valve conversion for the Flathead before his later work at General Motors. The engine Henry Ford had created to make motoring affordable became the foundation of a new performance culture. The Flathead V8 didn't just put eight cylinders in ordinary cars. It gave ordinary people the opportunity to turn those cars into hot rods—and helped create an American automotive tradition that still lives today.

10/15/2026

A farm boy from Columbus, Indiana with no formal education past the eighth grade ended up putting his name on diesel engines running in trucks, trains, and generators all over the world. ⚙️

Clessie Cummins was born in 1888 on a farm near Columbus, built his first steam engine at age eleven, and later worked as a chauffeur and mechanic for local banker William G. Irwin.

Irwin backed him to found Cummins Engine Company in 1919. To prove diesel power could compete, Cummins drove a diesel powered Packard from Indiana to the 1929 New York auto show on about a dollar and thirty nine cents of fuel, and in 1931 he even entered a diesel powered car at the Indianapolis 500, where it finished the entire race without a single pit stop.

Did you know Cummins started as one mechanic's idea in a small Indiana machine shop rather than a big city factory?

10/12/2026

Mickey Thompson built what was then the fastest car in America in a garage in Long Beach, California—not inside a factory or a major racing team’s engineering department, but with his family, friends, mechanic Fritz Voight, and virtually every dollar he could spare. The result was Challenger I, a hand-built streamliner powered by four supercharged Pontiac V8s, equipped with four 1937 Cadillac LaSalle transmissions controlled by a single shift lever, and driven through all four wheels. George Hill shaped its body to minimize aerodynamic drag, while the completed machine weighed approximately 7,000 pounds. On September 9, 1960, at the Bonneville Salt Flats, Thompson pushed Challenger I to 406.60 mph in a one-way pass. He became the first American to break the 400-mph barrier, achieving a milestone that had demanded extraordinary engineering, mechanical ingenuity, and nerve.
The engines came from Pontiac under division chief Semon “Bunkie” Knudsen, who was transforming the brand’s conservative image into one associated with performance. Challenger I carried four Pontiac V8s, each displacing 415 cubic inches, or approximately 6.8 liters, and fitted with GMC Roots-type superchargers. Each engine powered a separate wheel through its own driveline. The front engines were mounted facing backward to drive the front wheels, while the rear engines faced forward to drive the rear wheels. All four transmissions were linked to a single shift lever in the cockpit, creating a remarkably complex machine that Thompson had to operate at speeds few drivers had ever experienced. Combined output has been estimated at approximately 1,600 to 2,000 horsepower, depending on the source. The cockpit was so cramped that the team nicknamed it “the sardine can.” During one run, a malfunctioning oxygen hose caused Thompson to lose consciousness at speed. He survived—and returned to make another attempt.
The 406.60-mph run surpassed John Cobb’s 1947 one-way mark of approximately 402 mph, achieved with the Railton Mobil Special and its two W12 aircraft engines. But there was a crucial distinction between setting an extraordinary speed and securing an internationally recognized record. FIA rules required two consecutive runs in opposite directions, with the results used to establish the official average. Challenger I suffered a broken driveshaft before Thompson could complete the return pass. The speed stood, but the record remained unofficial. Thompson went home, repaired the car, and prepared to try again, yet the Bonneville salt conditions never aligned with the opportunity he needed. Meanwhile, Craig Breedlove and his jet-powered Spirit of America moved beyond 400 mph in 1963, demonstrating how rapidly turbine power was changing the pursuit of absolute land speed records.
Thompson refused to let one unfinished attempt define his career. He developed Challenger II, powered by two Ford 427 V8s, for a planned 1968 assault on the record, but rain flooded the Bonneville course and ended the effort before it could begin. Away from the salt, he founded Mickey Thompson Performance Tires in 1963, experimented with rear-engined Indianapolis 500 cars powered by production-based Buick V8s as early as 1962, and established SCORE International, helping shape organized off-road racing. In 1988, Mickey Thompson and his wife, Trudy, were murdered outside their home. The case remained unresolved for years until a former business partner was convicted in 2007. Three decades after Mickey’s death, his son Danny returned Challenger II to Bonneville in 2018 with twin nitro-burning Hemi V8s producing a reported combined 5,000 horsepower. The car reached 448.757 mph, establishing a piston-powered land-speed record and bringing the family’s unfinished pursuit closer to its conclusion. Four Pontiac V8s. Four transmissions. One shift lever. A one-way run at 406.60 mph—and a streamliner built in a garage that proved how far determination could take a man.

10/12/2026

Only 76 of these 1960 Edsel convertibles exist. Ford pulled the plug just 36 days in — right when the brand finally got good. Read more. 👇