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The engine is built purposely for the Z06.
It's designed, clean sheet of paper,
all brand-new, for the Z06.
It shares no parts with any other engine
that Chevrolet or General Motors has ever built.
With the eighth-generation Z06 we wanted to get back
to our naturally aspirated roots.
A naturally aspirated engine gives a driver feedback
in a way that a supercharged engine just doesn't do well.
Because it was a clean sheet design
we weren't held to any of the old rules.
We all sat there and said is this the best way to do this?
Is this the absolute best way?
We need to make this street Z06
the best possible car ever
and then let's chase that down.
We knew that we had to exceed performance
of the seventh-generation Z06.
Well, how do you do that without the supercharger
that was built into that engine?
You do that by an engine that breathes better.
The way to make it breathe better
is to make it rev higher. To make it flow more air.
And that's the impetus behind the flat-plane crankshaft
and the dual overhead cam.
What allows a flat-plane crank V8 to spin
and rev so quickly is the fact
that you have very low inertia in the crankshaft.
And essentially, the entire what we call cranktrain,
which would be the pistons, the rod, and the crankshaft,
you're able to reduce the size of the counterweights
compared to a cross-plane.
And everything being lighter, it just spins faster.
So we started testing out the technology
for the never-before-done
naturally aspirated V8 with the overhead cam.
We put that in the race car to make sure
that it would give us everything that we needed.
And it has spent two years in the race car thriving
and doing well.
So, we knew it was great for the production car
when the Z06 was launched.
Learnings that we captured in that event
were able to carry us forward to then turn around
and get the championship in 2020.
Both the Manufacturers and Drivers.
We also won the Manufacturers and Drivers Championship
in 2021.
A flat-plane crank allows you some unique ways
to tune both the intake and the exhaust.
Within the manifold, there's actually three tuning valves,
and then when you have the tuning valves,
you are actually able to change
the internal volume of the intake manifold,
and you can stitch that all together
to give you the maximum across the entire rpm range.
When you have that high volumetric efficiency,
the way the engine can really breathe,
you get not only something with a high rpm limit,
8,600 rpm, but it gets there so quickly.
It basically, it seems like it never wants to stop pulling.
It just pulls and pulls.
It does not...
You don't feel the power really tapering off.
To touch the throttle is like an F1 car.
It's just an instant “Blat” of flat-plane crank,
titanium connecting rod fury.
We've done some unique things on this engine,
such as where we place the fuel injector.
It's on the exhaust side versus the intake side.
We've done a purely mechanical valvetrain.
We've done a sealed bay,
individually scavenged dry-sump system,
and it's one of the really neat aspects of this engine.
So, the LT6 program we had code-named Project Gemini.
There has been a long association with astronauts
and the space program with Corvette.
Gemini is obviously the zodiac sign for twins,
and there is a twin theme throughout the engine:
twin throttle bodies, twin intake plenums,
twin sets of exhaust and intake valves,
twin sets of cam shafts, twin fuel pumps.
So, it's throughout the engine,
and it really ties everything together.
Knowing that you're driving this piece of machinery
that becomes an extension of your body
is a very visceral experience.
The flat-plane crank, the high rpm,
The freedom we've been given to put all this race car
in a street car is just incredible.
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