When there were FOUR 350 V8 engines - your opinion

[trinacriabob]

I was having this discussion with a few people on Friday.  GM essentially bought up some independent motor companies (Olds, Buick) to create their large entity and kept their strong divisional thinking for decades after that.

Up until the 1970s, FOUR divisions of GM made a 350 small block V8 engine.  Essentially, it was each division except Cadillac.

Rank these 4 (Chevy, Pontiac, Olds, Buick) in your order of preference: 1, 2, 3, 4 - for whatever reason, such as longevity, materials, intake, exhaust, general configuration (for repair, access), whatever you decide ...

[balthazar]

Note that those were slightly fudged numbers for marketing purposes; the Pontiac 350 was actually a 355. Other ‘350’s might also be a bit off (nothing like daimler calling a 4.0L engine a ‘560’ tho! 😆 ) 

I have no preferences here, as I’m a big block guy and not much interchanges. I can tell you that the Buick 350 -like it’s big brother- has a really great torque plot.

[David]

For me the choice is based on past auto's from those vendors so I would put the V8's in this Order:

1. Olds
2. Chevy
3. Pontiac
4. Buick

6 minutes ago, balthazar said:

Note that those were slightly fudged numbers for marketing purposes; the Pontiac 350 was actually a 355. Other ‘350’s might also be a bit off (nothing like daimler calling a 4.0L engine a ‘560’ tho! 😆 ) 

I have no preferences here, as I’m a big block guy and not much interchanges. I can tell you that the Buick 350 -like it’s big brother- has a really great torque plot.

Curiosity Question to the Yoda of all things old. 

So the big blocks in the Cadillac, Buick, Olds and Chevy all came from the same department in GM?

[trinacriabob]

20 minutes ago, dfelt said:

For me the choice is based on past auto's from those vendors so I would put the V8's in this Order:

1. Olds
2. Chevy
3. Pontiac
4. Buick

Very, very close to what I thought:

1. Olds (by a fairly wide margin)

2. Pontiac (I prefer the under hood layout to that of Chevy, as well as its sound)

3. Chevrolet

4. Buick

Also, weren't there THREE 455 big block V8s at one one (Olds, Buick, Pontiac), all different from each other, while Chevy had a 454 V8?  

[balthazar]

• Cadillac had no big block until it had a small block, but even then it’s 350 (‘76) was forged at Olds... so still only 1 block at that point.
• Yes; there were 3 co-existing 455s, tho Olds got theirs out in ‘68 and Pontiac & Buick in ‘70. Nothing interchanges.

• Each Division had their own proprietary engine programs & foundries to produce them. This went back to the independent roots of each Division; Cadillac’s engine building began in 1890.

[trinacriabob]

10 minutes ago, balthazar said:

• Cadillac had no big block until it had a small block, but even then it’s 350 (‘76) was forged at Olds... so still only 1 block at that point.
• Yes; there were 3 co-existing 455s, tho Olds got theirs out in ‘68 and Pontiac & Buick in ‘70. Nothing interchanges.

I know that Cadillac used the 350 V8 in the first Seville but I kept it to four divisions because, in that case, they were very forthcoming that Oldsmobile had produced the engine specifically for them, but with (then rudimentary) fuel injection instead of a carburetor.  It still looked like a carbureted engine when you lifted up the hood of a Seville with a 350 V8.

Good move on Cadillac's part.  That's probably why you sometimes still see first-gen Sevilles on the road today.  What a success story for Cadillac.

 

[Robert Hall]

And several divisions had unrelated 400s during the late 60s-70s.  Looking back from today, it's hard to comprehend one corporation having 5 brands with their own engine development and manufacturing...seems like it would be very costly and inefficient to have that much duplication across brands. 

[David]

1 hour ago, Robert Hall said:

And several divisions had unrelated 400s during the late 60s-70s.  Looking back from today, it's hard to comprehend one corporation having 5 brands with their own engine development and manufacturing...seems like it would be very costly and inefficient to have that much duplication across brands. 

One would have thought "What If" GM had actually realized they could have one engine development team for all of GM in the 60's or 70's where GM would be today and if the Bankruptcy could have been avoided. 

Course one could then say, where would Chevrolet be now if GM had not Wasted money on Saturn but invested that money / tech into Chevrolet.

Always can say "What if!"

[balthazar]

On 12/10/2019 at 8:36 AM, Robert Hall said:

And several divisions had unrelated 400s during the late 60s-70s.  Looking back from today, it's hard to comprehend one corporation having 5 brands with their own engine development and manufacturing...seems like it would be very costly and inefficient to have that much duplication across brands. 

Pretty straightforward; it wasn't 'duplication', it was 'competition'. They were largely autonomous Divisions. FoMoCo & ChryCo also had 400s- it was a 'tier' of displacements that customers were looking for. Another tier was 350-351-352 and 421-425-426-427-428-429-430 (some of these were set to comply with racing classes).

Another: 300, 301, 302, 303, 304, 305, 307.

Going to 'GM Powertrain' in the early '80s ("corporate engines") began the slide of GM's market share and devalued the Divisions to a notable degree.


 

On 12/10/2019 at 9:48 AM, dfelt said:

One would have thought "What If" GM had actually realized they could have one engine development team for all of GM in the 60's or 70's where GM would be today and if the Bankruptcy could have been avoided.

BK would have hit a decade or so SOONER.
You recall the case brought against GM for sharing 350s without telling customers? It was not widely acceptable then because Divisional identities were so strong.

Edited December 11, 2019 by balthazar

[oldshurst442]

On 12/10/2019 at 9:48 AM, dfelt said:

One would have thought "What If" GM had actually realized they could have one engine development team for all of GM in the 60's or 70's where GM would be today and if the Bankruptcy could have been avoided. 

Au contraire I believe. 

I personally think that one contributing factor in the demise of Oldsmobile and Pontiac was BECAUSE GM went with the "corporate" engine route.  Many loyal Pontiac and Oldsmobile fans and buyers never forgave GM for eliminating Oldsmobile's and Pontiac's right to produce their own engines.  There were many loyal Pontiac and Oldsmobile engine fanatics that never really wanted or loved Chevrolet engines.

The corporate V8 to this day is a Chevrolet V8... 

At least Oldsmobile designed the Northstar V8 and had its mark on V8s for GM, but the Northstar was touted and marketed as a Cadillac engine. The Aurora V8 was Oldsmobile's V8 which was a smaller displacement version of the "Cadillac Northstar"... it lacked  cubic displacement, horsepower and torque in the road cars to actually make Oldsmobile fanboys happy and proud and ultimately keep them as clients.  At least the engine had success in racing, but GM was using mixed marketing signals and wasnt clear as to which division the North star/Aurora really belonged to and which "version" had success in the racing programs of the 1990s. 

At least Oldsmobile also had a hand in GM's 4 cylinder development in keeping up with the times in the 1980s and well into the 1990s with the Quad 4...but the engine was ridiculed by the American automotive journalists for a lack of balance shafts and therefore less "refined" than the Japanese counterparts, which was a bunch of bullshyte...and which of course the Japanese jumped on that immediately with their advertisements in the American market...

The bad thing about the Quad 4 was the gaskets leaked over a period of time...a problem that the Northstar had too...

At least Oldsmobile also had hindsight to see the market perception of the need not only for 4 valves/cylinder DOHC V8 engines, and 4 bangers, but for 6 cylinders as well and the Shortstar was born.  Based on the Northstar/Aurora V8...

But, GM did not really advertise that Oldsmobile still produced engines for itself and those engines were "corporate" engines in effect... 

Poor old Pontiac though, had to concern itself in selling copy cat Chevrolet pony cars, it was always like that, but at least in the early 1970s, those were powered by pure Poncho engines, but by the time the 1980s rolled along, with a Pontiac fanboy's point of view, those awesome Firebirds/Trans Ams are not just shytty badge engineered Chevys with shytty Chevy engines underneath...

And yes, along with the billions of dollars creating Saturn, and the billions in buying SAAB and trying to sustain both Saturn and SAAB, those 3 things had a huuuuuuge impact in the demise of Pontiac and Oldsmobile.

And if we think clearly enough, many fans of those brands never came back to GM to buy Chevrolets or Buicks or Cadillacs.

Not only did GM lose market share to the Japanese and Germans, because of the reasons we have discussed ad nauseam,  but because of the decision from GM itself to consolidate its brands.

GM underestimated the loyalty of its customers and arrogantly thought that just because Oldsmobile and Pontiac were under the GM umbrella, that Pontiac and Oldsmobile buyers were actually in fact, GM customers....for life...  In other words, they believed their own marketing bullshyte in that a GM buyer will start life as a beginner and buy himself a Chevy, and as his finances grow, the customer will upgrade or graduate to Pontiac, then Oldsmobile, the Buick, then Cadillac...

A good marketing strategy, but not really reality...

Not a good thing when you start believing your own bullshyte...and yes...marketing in general is bullshyte...effective bullshyte...but bullshyte non the less...

 

 

I personally believe, instead of spending billions on the billions they spent on trying to reverse the market share decline on compliance  shyteboxes such as the X platform Citation and its badge engineered siblings, on the dumb decision to make a Cavalier into a Cadillac, (Nothing really wrong with the J platform), the crappy launch and the billions lost on the W-Body, the idiocy to develop a new kind of car company Saturn, the stupid decision to buy SAAB...

Instead of all those BILLIONS lost and the result was MEDIOCRE to POOR and SHYTE vehicles, if GM had spent those BILLIONS  on REALLY engineering GREAT cars INCLUDING keeping the AUTONOMOUS identity of ALL its BRANDS that were Chevrolet, Pontiac, Buick, Oldsmobile, Cadillac and GMC, then market share would stabilize and probably grow...

 

Edited December 11, 2019 by oldshurst442

[oldshurst442]

As far as my personal favorite GM engine from one of its brands?

Im too young to have actually experienced true Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Buick engines from that time period. 

I owned a very tired 1985 Olds 88 but to this day I do not know what was under the hood.  It was a Canadian car, did it have a Chevy/GM 305 underneath?  I dont know...

I read in these forums that Old's own 307 could have been under the hood since Olds' 307 was a go to engine in the 1980s...and it was an Oldsmobile that I owned to begin with.  But like I said, it was old and tired by the time I owned it. 

I did drive a 1979 6.6 liter Trans Am for a good chunk of the day one time a long time ago.....  But was it an Olds engine under the hood or was that the Pontiac one?  

I had the pleasure to drive a very mint 1977 Cadillac Coupe de Ville a couple of years ago, and I believe that it had the 425 cubic inch engine in it.  But driving it once around the block does not really help in forming an opinion on a thread like this. 

In other words, I have no real life experience to really answer this...

I have experienced 305s, 350s, from Chevy.

I have experienced Northstar and Aurora V8s.  I have experienced Buick's 3.8 V6.  

I think by default, Chevy's 305 and 350 from the 1980s and 1990s  but really  4rth gen ponycars from the 1990s LT1 and LS1 wins hands down... 

Edited December 11, 2019 by oldshurst442

[Robert Hall]

Personally, I have very little experience w/ GM V8s---the only GM V8 I've had hands on experience with driving often was the '00 DTS w/ the Northstar V8...pretty quiet and smooth,  liked it a lot.  My folks '85 Winnebago had a 454, drove it a few times, I remember it had a lot of oil leaks and other issues from new.   The only older GM car w/ a V8 I drove a few times about 20 years ago was my brother's '68 Camaro SS 396 w/ 4 spd.  It was very loud and raw and fast..neat car. 

[ccap41]

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Edited December 11, 2019 by ccap41
Wrong Thread

[balthazar]

Except for a couple I-6s, everything I've owned has been a V8.

[David]

2 hours ago, balthazar said:

Except for a couple I-6s, everything I've owned has been a V8.

Except for 1 V6 and 1 I4, everything I have ever owned is also been a V8

[Robert Hall]

The V8 I've had the most experience with was the old Ford 5.0...   most of the vehicles I've owned have been 6s--- 3 straight 6s and two V6s.   Two 4 cyls---a Ford/Mazda 2.0 diesel and a Ford 2.3, both mid 80s.   Wouldn't mind having a V8 again at some point, probably a Mopar w/ a modern Hemi. 

 

[David]

Will be interesting to see how we reference electric motors down the road. Will it be size like ICE cubic inches or Liters or will it be Horsepower / Kilowatts of power? 🤔

[Robert Hall]

31 minutes ago, dfelt said:

Will be interesting to see how we reference electric motors down the road. Will it be size like ICE cubic inches or Liters or will it be Horsepower / Kilowatts of power? 🤔

kilowatts, I would assume...though I see power measured in MJ also. 

[balthazar]

I di think Cadillac is ahead of the curve on this one, esp since BE and IC will be sharing the markets for the next, oh; 50 years at least.

You guys see that the Taycan’s EPA numbers came in like 80 under where Porsche stated they would be; a range of only 200?

[David]

11 minutes ago, balthazar said:

I di think Cadillac is ahead of the curve on this one, esp since BE and IC will be sharing the markets for the next, oh; 50 years at least.

You guys see that the Taycan’s EPA numbers came in like 80 under where Porsche stated they would be; a range of only 200?

Yes this is to be expected, I have never understood the European scale as real life owners never get the crazy rating of the battery pack. Solid state batteries should help change this.

[Drew Dowdell]

I'm surprised I didn't answer this thread when it was started, but I'm sure NONE of you can guess my lineup. /s

 

1. Olds - Torque
2. Buick - Torque
3. Chevy - Ease of service and easily sourced parts. 
4. Pontiac

[balthazar]

1. Pontiac - familiarity / TRQ
2. Buick - same reasons
3. Olds - neutral impression
4. Chevy - too common

[trinacriabob]

On 12/9/2020 at 11:56 AM, Drew Dowdell said:

I'm surprised I didn't answer this thread when it was started, but I'm sure NONE of you can guess my lineup. /s

1. Olds - Torque
2. Buick - Torque
3. Chevy - Ease of service and easily sourced parts. 
4. Pontiac

I can see Olds for you.  Definitely.  Didn't look at Chevy from those lenses, but okay.

On 12/9/2020 at 1:23 PM, balthazar said:

1. Pontiac - familiarity / TRQ
2. Buick - same reasons
3. Olds - neutral impression
4. Chevy - too common

I can see Pontiac for you.  Definitely.  Chevy being "too common" is very balthazar!  In its own weird way, Pontiac was the most interesting of GM's brands.  It stood out more than the others.

I see Buick in second place with both of you.  With Buick owners, I've either known those with the biggest of Buicks, hence 455s, and even more with Buicks powered by V6s, so I didn't know many with the bread and butter 350.  Most of the 350s were in Skylarks (family friends), with some in Regals from the '70s.  And I did not know any whose 350s racked up high mileage.

I've read stories about Olds V8 longevity and some stories have been impressive.  However, from personal experience, it has been owners of Chevy 350s who have racked up the most miles.  My one negative experience with a Chevy 305 sidelined me from my ranking the Chevy 350 as high as some of you.

[balthazar]

Chevy 305 & 350 are different experiences on numerous fronts, from what I've read/heard.

[Drew Dowdell]

22 hours ago, trinacriabob said:

I can see Olds for you.  Definitely.  Didn't look at Chevy from those lenses, but okay.

I can see Pontiac for you.  Definitely.  Chevy being "too common" is very balthazar!  In its own weird way, Pontiac was the most interesting of GM's brands.  It stood out more than the others.

I see Buick in second place with both of you.  With Buick owners, I've either known those with the biggest of Buicks, hence 455s, and even more with Buicks powered by V6s, so I didn't know many with the bread and butter 350.  Most of the 350s were in Skylarks (family friends), with some in Regals from the '70s.  And I did not know any whose 350s racked up high mileage.

I've read stories about Olds V8 longevity and some stories have been impressive.  However, from personal experience, it has been owners of Chevy 350s who have racked up the most miles.  My one negative experience with a Chevy 305 sidelined me from my ranking the Chevy 350 as high as some of you.

The Olds V8 has a legend to it second only to the Chevy 350, and that legend is very much earned.  They were very robust engines (all the GM 350s were) but why I favor them is that they were torque monsters and I love low RPM torque. It gives you that strong, silent, effortless thrust and they're able to just loaf along at low RPM at highway speeds (provided you have an overdrive gear, it is a listed Federal hate crime [42 U.S.C. 1396 et seq.] if you pair an Olds 350/455 with a transmission that doesn't have an overdrive).

The Buick is similar in that vein, just not as legendary as the Olds Rocket.

The Chevy 350 is just common, like @balthazar said... you can walk into any pepboys and build one off the shelf if you wanted as long as you had a block to start with. 

 

[trinacriabob]

On 3/9/2021 at 11:15 AM, balthazar said:

Chevy 305 & 350 are different experiences on numerous fronts, from what I've read/heard.

Different driving experience, I'm sure of that.  However, at least at one point in time, the 305 was a de-bored 350.  The stroke was the same.

Also, the Wiki article does mention the premature cam wear (on both 305s and 350s) on some Chevy engines built from 1976 to 1980 because of cutting corners on materials and quality control.  That was a travesty.

2 hours ago, Drew Dowdell said:

The Olds V8 has a legend to it second only to the Chevy 350, and that legend is very much earned.  They were very robust engines (all the GM 350s were) but why I favor them is that they were torque monsters and I love low RPM torque. It gives you that strong, silent, effortless thrust and they're able to just loaf along at low RPM at highway speeds (provided you have an overdrive gear, it is a listed Federal hate crime [42 U.S.C. 1396 et seq.] if you pair an Olds 350/455 with a transmission that doesn't have an overdrive).

The Buick is similar in that vein, just not as legendary as the Olds Rocket.

The Chevy 350 is just common, like @balthazar said... you can walk into any pepboys and build one off the shelf if you wanted as long as you had a block to start with. 

I am not familiar with the graphics of the horsepower/torque curves, though it would be good to learn what they display.

However, I am on board with the silent but strong whoosh of the Rocket V8 as it pulls away from a stop or accelerates (when the exhaust system is in great shape and it still sounds "factory.')  In my case, it would have been the hand me down Olds 350 V8.  I used to love putting down the passenger window as I drove across a bridge on a two lane road ... and could safely do so, to hear the exhaust note play back at me.  It was music to my ears.  I "over-maintained" this hand me down car, so it sounded like that even past 170,000 miles when a farmer near Champaign, IL bought the car from me.

[balthazar]

I don’t believe most people would discern operational differences in similar tune 350s. Olds had a hi-po 310/390 small block but that’s a fringe tune. Garden variety 4bbl 350s are fairly close.

BB Buick 455 is an over-square configuration, and it developed more torque than the other 455s/454. Without looking up the specs on the 350s, I wouldn’t discount the Buick 350 as out-performing the Olds. My brother had a 350 Skylark way back, he was impressed by it, and he went to a 400/4-spd GTO from that.

Edited March 10, 2021 by balthazar

[Drew Dowdell]

1 hour ago, balthazar said:

I don’t believe most people would discern operational differences in similar tune 350s. Olds had a hi-po 310/390 small block but that’s a fringe tune. Garden variety 4bbl 350s are fairly close.

BB Buick 455 is an over-square configuration, and it developed more torque than the other 455s/454. Without looking up the specs on the 350s, I wouldn’t discount the Buick 350 as out-performing the Olds. My brother had a 350 Skylark way back, he was impressed by it, and he went to a 400/4-spd GTO from that.

You're probably right in that. I'm probably looking through rose colored glasses, but even my wheezy old 307 glides so easily.  Acceleration isn't the greatest, but I keep up with traffic fine and without flooring it. 

I looked up the torque curves on the Olds, Buick, and Chevy 350s and the Olds and Chevy are so close you can barely tell the difference.  The Buick actually slides the torque curve to the left slightly. It reaches 200 lb/ft about 200 rpm higher than the Olds/Chevy and reaches an identical torque peak about 500 rpm higher, but it does get to a higher peak horsepower (as would be expected by those rpm shifts). 

[balthazar]

I put thousands of miles on my father's 301 V8 Pontiac, and I've driven 307 Olds' cars numerous times. They're not what you'd call 'spritely'. 

[trinacriabob]

19 minutes ago, balthazar said:

I put thousands of miles on my father's 301 V8 Pontiac, and I've driven 307 Olds' cars numerous times. They're not what you'd call 'spritely'. 

But if they can deliver 250,000 miles or more without having a wrench taken to anything other than items appended to them, and close in on 25 mpg in automatic overdrive 4th gear, I'd be a happy camper with either.  Two solid old school GM small block V8s.

[Drew Dowdell]

21 minutes ago, balthazar said:

I put thousands of miles on my father's 301 V8 Pontiac, and I've driven 307 Olds' cars numerous times. They're not what you'd call 'spritely'. 

Yeah, no, they’re not spritely. But in normal traffic they barely break a sweat. They just go about their business nearly silently. Way better than spinning a tinny little 4 cylinder up to 6000 rpm just to keep up.

[balthazar]

On the flip side, you’d get the same mileage with a heap more moxie bumping the other way; to a 350.

[Drew Dowdell]

5 minutes ago, balthazar said:

On the flip side, you’d get the same mileage with a heap more moxie bumping the other way; to a 350.

Absolutely, and they are externally identical (on the Olds at least), so unless you’re looking a block casting numbers you can tell everyone it’s an all original 307 but really be running a 350. 

[balthazar]

But what you really do is drop a stroker crank in there, get it up to more like 390 CI.

[trinacriabob]

1 hour ago, Drew Dowdell said:

Yeah, no, they’re not spritely. But in normal traffic they barely break a sweat. They just go about their business nearly silently. Way better than spinning a tinny little 4 cylinder up to 6000 rpm just to keep up.

A silent engine, cabin, and everything else mean a lot to me in a vehicle.  For everyday driving, these engines work well.  The test might be one of America's heavy duty prolonged grades.  In my frame of reference, that would be the Grapevine, going from the Central Valley floor of CA up to Tejon Pass, and the northern border of L.A. County, where it's about 4,100 ft. in elevation.

The small block V8s muster the torque to keep going up that lengthy grade.  The 6s (V and I) we've had struggled a little bit.  

For that matter, the 4.3/4.4 siblings of these 4.9/5.0 GM V8s were suitable for everyday driving, but struggled with jack rabbit demands on them.

[David]

1 hour ago, balthazar said:

But what you really do is drop a stroker crank in there, get it up to more like 390 CI.

My 1994 GMC suburban I had the 350 pulled and bored out to a 402 with a stroker crank, custom chip and that baby fly's. So true, an awesome engine to make into a sleeper.