Despite hearing and reading the rumours over and over again about the all-new, 5.5 litre, naturally aspirated high revving V8 Chevrolet was putting in the upcoming C8 Z06, I am still completely awe struck by what Chevrolet has done and sticking to a naturally aspirated V8 against all odds. Please take a moment to welcome the most powerful naturally aspirated production V8 the world has ever seen (at least mainstream production). The title previously belonged to the now dead SLS AMG, which had AMG's legendary 6.2 litre V8 making 622 hp and 468 lb-ft of torque. The New Z06 eclipses the horsepower figure with a whopping 670 hp at a scarcely believable 8,400 rpm (with an 8,600 rpm redline). Despite the high revving nature AND the smaller displacement (5.5 litre vs 6.2 litre for the Merc), torque hardly suffers with a healthy 460 lb-ft of torque, only 8 lower the the bigger displacement AMG engine. At a time when AMG, BMW, and even Ferrari have abandoned naturally aspirated V8s, and af
Mitsubishi Evo X GSR at Atlantic Motorsport Park - Kevin Doubleday © If you live in Canada or the US, you'll find that plenty of people hold sacred the terms '4x4' and '4WD' to describe a 'true 4x4', where you have a butch transfer case with a low speed, perhaps a body on frame chassis, and ideally a solid axle or two. I'm not sure how that translates to the rest of the world. My extensive research into the motoring industry in Europe (which exclusively consists of watching Top Gear and The Grand Tour...) concluded that most people across the pond simply refer to any vehicle that is capable of sending any power to all four wheels as a 4WD vehicle, further muddying the waters. Where I grew up, 4x4 was more or less synonymous with 'Jeep' so that's not much help either. However, despite all various systems attempting to do the same sort of thing - distribute power between all four wheels instead of two - not all systems are created equal,