Automotive Engineering - April 2023 - 4

EDITORIAL
EDITORIAL
Bill Visnic
Editorial Director
Bill.Visnic@sae.org
Sunset for the American V8
Technologies transition from dominance
to nearly dead at different speeds and for
various reasons. That's particularly true for
motive power. Pistons, cams and valves
are giving way to anodes, cathodes and
inverters. Governments and OEMs are
pledging hard deadlines (2035!) to end
sales of combustion-engine light vehicles.
Amid the radical changes, what becomes
of the V8 - the engine type that has defined
American cars and trucks and has
spurred their sales for the past 70 years?
It took more than two decades for the
automobile to end the horse's reign as the
mainstream prime mover. Well into the
heyday of Ford's Model T, streets in many
U.S. towns remained clogged with horsedrawn
vehicles, period photos show.
A faster fall into obsolescence
greeted steam locomotives
and reciprocating
aero engines after World
War II. Few railroads wanted
to stick with the dirty
exhaust and high maintenance
of steamers and their
heavily pounded trackage,
when cleaner, smooth-running, less-fussy
diesel-electric power arrived in volume in
the late 1940s.
The war, of course, had ushered in jet
Consider Stellantis' iconic Hemi, which
Stellantis' iconic
Hemi breathed
a lot of life into
the modern V8
world.
aircraft and their obvious performance,
range, comfort, and maintenance advantages
over the " prop jobs. " Eventually,
gas turbines also replaced high-pressure
steam in warships for the same reasons.
The mid-century motive power revolution
also included the modern OHV gasoline
V8. With its lazy power and deepchested
exhaust note, the V8 delighted
drivers and spun big profits. A V8 signaled
that you'd made it. In recent years,
however, the script has flipped. Twice.
First came turbocharging, turning smaller,
more-efficient engines into giant killers.
A turbo V6 shockingly outsold the
incumbent V8 in Ford's F-150. Then
came EVs and a new shift in buyer aspiration
and consumer values.
In the distance, the sunset of the
American V8 is approaching. Not tomorrow,
but it's coming.
4 April 2023
" breathed a lot of life into the modern
V8 world " when it was launched by
DaimlerChrysler in 2002, noted James
Martin, associate director, automotive
consulting and veteran powertrain analyst
at S&P Global. " The Hemi made V8s
cool again, " he asserted. " And it made
GM and Ford wake up and get back into
performance V8s for muscle cars, passenger
cars, trucks and utilities, " including
crazy stuff like a track-day-focused
Jeep Grand Cherokee and the 800-hp
Dodge SRT Demon.
Double rocker shafts and two spark
plugs per cylinder added cost compared
with GM's simpler V8, but the Hemi has
retained its low-cost iron cylinder block
despite its original design
calling for A356-T6. And
it's been made in the same
plant in Mexico since '02.
" The cost position of the
Hemi is so favorable to
Stellantis, " Martin noted.
" That, combined with its
high retail markups,
makes it an engine that prints money.
Lots of it. The supercharged Hellcat
may have cost more to produce, but for
what it delivered in per-vehicle profits,
it's a bargain. "
But the Hemi family is diminishing; the
5.7L and 6.2L are gone after 2023. As its
pass-car platforms are eliminated,
Stellantis' new 3.0L twin-turbo inline-six
will fill in for pickups and utilities needing
at least 300 hp. Martin's latest forecast
shows only the 6.4L Hemi V8 carrying
on, with hybridization, primarily for
heavy-duty Ram pickups beyond 2035.
S&P hasn't seen evidence of a successor.
Currently, the Hemi V8 accounts for
about 40% of Ram pickup installations.
Projected volumes are in the " low double-digits "
range, a fraction of the nearly
half-million units in the Hemi's glory
days, Martin said. That scenario is being
played out at other OEMs still offering
V8s, as another motive power era begins
its eventual sunset.
Lindsay Brooke, Editor-in-Chief
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AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING
Automotive Engineering - April 2023

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