Autoblog

Click above for a high-res gallery of the Hyundai Genesis sedan.

The Hyundai Genesis sedan has only been on sale for a month, but the automaker is already considering upgrading the current 4.6-liter V8 with a 5.0-liter version. Hyundai's North American product chief, John Krafcik, told MotorTrend that the Tau V8 could be stroked up to 5.5-liters, but the ideal displacement to keep fuel economy on par with power is an even five liters.

The plan is to increase the displacement of the V8, as well as adding direct-injection to Hyundai and Kia's range of fours, sixes and eights over the next few years. It's a move that several automakers have already adopted and Hyundai's decision to increase its V8's displacement will only happen if it can keep output the same or better while retaining the 4.6-liter's fuel economy.


[Source: MotorTrend]

Click the image above for the Advance Automotive's Heldo high res gallery

We've seen everything from Challengers and Camaros to Vespas and Vipers today, but there was only one Heldo. Advanced Automotives' Heldo is a steel tube space frame concept with composite bodywork and a 350-horsepower 32V Cadillac Northstar engine. According to the Advance Automotive website, the rear engine Heldo can reach 60 mph in a mere 4.1 seconds, take 12.2 seconds to hit a quarter mile, and pull north of 1g on the skid pad. We have no way of verifying those lofty performance statistics, but we can tell you that it looks very cool in silver. Some of our favorite features are the gull-wingish doors, crazy thin LED tail lights, and the exposed carbon fiber hood, but the crazy aqua duct side pods may have to go. Will we ever see a production Heldo on public roads? No, but we wouldn't mind if we did. Click on the high resolution gallery below to see the Heldo in all its odd glory.

Automobile Magazine was invited into General Motors Performance Build Center to watch and lightly assist in the buildup of a ZR-1's internal combustion heart. It takes four-and-a-half hours of real time to go from a bare block to a fire-breathing, supercharged LS9, but through the magic of sped-up video, it only takes seven minutes of your life. You won't come away with anything productive for that time, unlike the people in the video, who get the pleasure of creating a small-block V8, but it's a neat picture of how it all comes together. We just hope that some other poor sucker gets the motor that the magazine intern fiddled with. Video posted after the jump.

[Source: Automobile]

The tremendous pressure on the auto industry is rapidly unraveling even the most carefully laid out plans. Fuel economy is king right now, and trucks and SUVs have gone from cash cows to the 6,000-pound albatross around the necks of automakers. Ford has been giving us a steady flow of news regarding its plans to weather this wicked storm, including the decision to switch truck and SUV plants into facilities that can produce fuel efficient cars and the delayed launch of the 2009 F-150. Now we're hearing from Mike Levine at Pickuptrucks.com that the Blue Oval has all but killed the once promising Boss V8 engine program.

The powerful V8 engine was slated to appear on models ranging from the new Mustang to the best-selling F-150 and Super Dudy, but a stop work order has narrowed the Boss' available engine bays down to one model. Ford President of the Americas Mark Fields told Levine that while the program isn't being killed completely, it will now only appear in one vehicle. Levine has heard from three sources that the lone vehicle will be the Super Duty, which needs a more efficient replacement for the 6.8L V10. Ford has already spent a load of cash on the beefy pushrod, so killing the program altogether would have been a tough pill to swallow. Ford was also planning on more than one displacement for the Boss, but with it now only going in the Super Duty, it'll likely only appear in 6.2-liter guise.

Ford will likely move any and all monetary and development resources possible away from the Boss, and into the hands of greener projects like the US-bound Fiesta. The move makes abundant sense given the current realities Ford is facing, but it still saddens us that we won't get to mash the pedal to unleash 400 naturally aspirated ponies any time soon.

[Source: Pickuptrucks]

Click above for a high resolution gallery of the V8 Vantage

Not one to settle, Aston Martin is giving its V8 Vantage a host of upgrades for 2009 highlighted by a larger V8 engine with more power. Originally displacing 4.3 liters, the V8 has been bored and stroked to 4.7 liters for an 11% increase in power to 420 bhp and a 15% increase in torque to 347 lb-ft. Despite these changes, fuel economy has been improved by 13%. Both optional transmissions have been upgraded as well, with the 6-speed manual getting a modified clutch and flywheel, and the Sportshift automatic has been programmed to provide smoother shifts. The suspension has been slightly revised with slightly stiffer spring rates, improved steering geometry, and stiffer bushings in the front suspension to improve handling. The interior has been revamped with a new center console finished in graphite silver as well as an ECU that replaces the standard key. Thankfully the Vantage's beautiful lines have remained untouched, although new 19-inch wheels are available.

Full details on the 2009 upgrades to the V8 Vantage can be found in the press release after the jump.

[Source: Aston Martin]

The GMnext blog has a post up that talks about the potential viability of a low-displacement turbocharged motor -- the direct-injected 2.0L Ecotec turbo, specifically -- in upcoming GM cars, including the Camaro. Let's talk about this a little. The breathed-upon Ecotec delivers 260 horses and 260 lb-ft of torque, and if you've driven, say, the Sky or Solstice equipped with it, you know just how ballsy it really is. It's more powerful (but less torquey) than either V8 offered in the '87 IROC-Z that I thought was so cool back during high school. The turbo four might well be a nice solution in a future iteration of the Camaro, but is the fuel economy argument for it as rock solid as it might seem on the surface?

The Pontiac Solstice GXP with the turbo four has an EPA fuel economy rating of 19 city/28 hwy when mated to a 5-speed manual. Not bad at all for the performance it delivers, but that same drivetrain in the bigger, heavier Camaro isn't likely to give you equal returns in terms of fuel consumption. Over at AutoblogGreen, Sam notes that the 2.0 turbo's lighter weight relative to the six- and eight-cylinders the Camaro's going to launch with should help somewhat. He follows by reminding us that GM's next-gen mild hybrid system will work with RWD cars and predicts that we'll see a 2.0T hybrid Camaro by 2011 or so. This would dovetail neatly with the first phase of the new CAFE regs, and we're sure GM would find a way to engineer a hypothetical turbo/hybrid's fuel economy numbers so they'd play nice within Uncle Sam's rules. Great.

The issue with all this talk of four-cylinder turbos and hybrids for a muscle car (along with attempts to redefine the class and reset expectations) is that everyone conveniently overlooks just how good the existing V8 is. In the 2008 Corvette Coupe, the big bad 6.2L LS3 is rated at 16 city/26 hwy. Hardly a guzzler in the traditional sense, the V8's rating isn't that far off from the direct-injected Ecotec turbo. Furthermore, the V8's fuel economy comes with 430 horsepower and 424 lb-ft of torque. Those are numbers befitting a muscle car like a Camaro. Who's to say a direct-injected LS-family V8 with efficiency tech like hybridization and/or cylinder deactivation wouldn't be just as effective at meeting the federal fuel economy requirements that begin taking effect a few years from now? You could potentially satisfy the government-created CAFE gods without giving the customers who want actual, traditional muscle the finger in the process. Yes, the consensus seems to be that smaller engines will be a necessity across the board in the new CAFE era, but let's not summarily ignore the bigger ones just because they're big.

Click above for a high-res gallery of the Caterham RST-V8 Levante.

Caterhams have always been the model for minimalist motoring and it's rare that owners have been wanting for more motivation, but RS Performance has answered the call of a few owners that want insane power to match the Caterham's spartan looks.

Packing a supercharged 2.4-liter, V8 driving the rear wheels through a six-speed gearbox, RS Performance is giving well-heeled drivers 550 hp (at 10,000 rpm!) to simultaneously dry their hair and wet their pants. With a curb weight of almost 1,150 pounds, that means a power to weight ratio of around 1000 hp per ton and a 0-60 time of under three seconds.

Getting that grunt to the ground is difficult, at best. With the majority of the body panels being replaced with carbon fiber bits, along with an F1-style front splitter, steering wheel and Kevlar seats, the lack of mass is something drivers will have to overcome. Thankfully, the chassis, sticky rubber and traction/launch control should keep things in check.

If the £115,000 cost of entry for the supercharged version is a bit more than your wallet can bear, a naturally aspirated variant is available as well producing a "paltry" 380 hp. Included in the cost of the RST-V8 is a two-day driver training course when you take delivery. Good call Caterham.

The full press release with all the technical details is posted after the jump.

When we last saw the Lotus Esprit in 2004, it was equipped with a 3.5-liter twin-turbo V8 rated at about 350 hp. Offering much more motivation than its early turbocharged 4-cylinder powerplant, the Esprit V8 was quick -- pedal to the floor, the two-seat coupe could punch through 60 mph in less than 5 seconds. Impressive as it was just a few years ago, there are more than a handful of cars (at half the price) that can shame the Lotus back across the Pond today.

To keep the upcoming 2011 Lotus Esprit at the front of the pack, it is rumored to be fitted with the 4.4-liter twin-turbo V8 found under the hood of the recently released BMW X6. The powerplant is rated at 400 horsepower with only light boost under the German's hood. Under the fiberglass cover of the future British Esprit, it will most likely be tuned to deliver nearly 500 horsepower. It will need every bit of power it can get, as the new Lotus will be competing with the Porsche 911 Turbo, Ferrari F430, and the new Nissan GT-R.

[Source: eGMCartech]

We've heard this tune before. Automakers have pushed vehicles to the zenith of attainable on-road performance, with even family vehicles being outfitted with fire-breathing engines. Anything you buy today will run rings around the performance cars of yore. Boomers may get misty-eyed about how great the glory days of the 1960s were for hot cars, but that's just the filthy exhaust clouding their judgement. The golden age of performance is now. Just as it went down nigh on 38 years ago, big V8 thumpers are having their death knell sounded. Scott Burgess posits in the Detroit News that the muscle car formula could undergo some revision.

Burgess spoke with GM's Troy Clarke, who thinks that muscle cars will evolve into vehicles that sell more on the strength of their style and innovation, rather than live axles and cubic inches. We agree that there will be widespread evolution and experimentation when it comes to powertrains, but we thought muscle cars already sold largely on their stylishness. We went digging at Ford to take a look at Mustang sales to see if our suspicions could be confirmed.

It could be CAFE, it could be gas prices, it could be the everpresent chatter on all things green, it could be that it's just so bloody hot on Earth nowadays, it could be all those folks in California begging for clean air. But according to recent data and a study by Edmunds.com, V8's simply aren't in vogue anymore, with overall uptake among new car buyers dropping four percent over the last two years.

Along with the decline in SUV purchases, those who are still buying SUV's are shunning V8's twice as quickly, with a nine-percent decline over the last two years. Among full-size sedan and coupe buyers, seven-percent fewer checked the "Big V8" box on the options checklist.

The only place V8's aren't sliding down the mountain is in the full-size pickup market, where four-percent more buyers are still going for stump-pulling power. The theory is that "casual" pickup buyers are opting for something less thirsty, leaving more of those folks who actually haul things to buy pickup trucks powered as God intended. But with even full-size pickups feeling the sales pinch, it looks like the march toward 35-MPG has begun.

[Source: Inside Line]