It’s like the engineers looked at the ZZ572 Big Block and said “hold my beer”.
Right now is a strange time, isn’t it? There’s all the talk of General Motors moving toward electric vehicles, building battery plants and what not. Then you have the team over at Chevrolet Performance, who seems to have just gone, “Nah, not yet”, and continues to up the ante with larger and larger V8 crate engines. Their latest creation? The ZZ632/1000 — a gargantuan 632-cubic-inch, naturally aspirated in V8.
Per GM’s director of the Performance and Racing Propulsion team, “This is the biggest, baddest crate engine we’ve ever built.”
Not only is it huge — the iron block ZZ632’s displacement works out to 10.4 liters — but it’s designed to make its earthquake of power on pump gas. It revs to 7,000 RPM, and reaches a peak power output of 1,004 horsepower and 876 lb-ft of torque. What’s this “Hellcat” you speak of?
Actually, on the subject, that sort of power sits right in the ballpark of Mopar’s 1,000-horsepower Hellephant, though that crate engine does rely on forced induction. Its displacement is also 426 cubic inches, so we are really talking about the epitome of “ain’t no replacement for displacement” on the Chevrolet Performance crew’s part. The port-injected engine makes use of high-flow aluminum cylinder heads, with all intake ports on the ZZ632 having the same length, volume and layout. The exhaust ports are also identical. On that basis, all eight of its cylinders, Chevy says, produce similar power.
I mean, 125.5 horsepower per cylinder is an interesting way to frame this massive powerplant. In creating this motor, the ZZ632 shared the mold with the ZZ572 used in the COPO Camaro, but Chevy Performance bored out the cylinders by 0.04 inches and increased the stroke by 0.375 inches. The engineers had to modify the block and connecting rods to provide more clearance, and durability tested the engine by running 200 simulated drag passes on a dynamometer.
Okay, how much does it cost?
Chevrolet Performance dealers will start delivering the ZZ632 in early 2022. At this point, though, GM did not announce formal pricing for their biggest crate engine ever. It certainly won’t come cheap. While GM cranks out larger and larger motors and Mopar continues to offer its own options, Ford is also reportedly working on a twin-turbocharged version of its 7.3-liter “Godzilla” V8? Internal combustion? It’s not dead yet — at least not for the horsepower-obsessed enthusiasts who can afford these motors.
We will have the opportunity to see more of this engine at SEMA in Las Vegas in early November, so stay tuned for more updates!