GM's $854 Million Investment in the Small Block V8 251

00:00SPEAKER_02: Are you ever excited for another episode of No Driving Gloves?

00:03SPEAKER_02: On episode 251, Derek and John discuss why would you spend almost a billion dollars to

00:10SPEAKER_02: create a gasoline motor when everything is going electric?

00:14SPEAKER_02: And the history of the General Motors.

00:17SPEAKER_02: P8.

00:18SPEAKER_02: Hit it, Kerry.

00:19SPEAKER_00: So, if you want to talk about cars, Ferrari, GTO, Bentley, CRX, and even down to your great

00:38SPEAKER_00: granddad's peerless, welcome to No Driving Gloves, the Car Talk Authority, where experienced

00:48SPEAKER_00: and experienced drivers share the same seat.

00:51SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the ride.

00:53SPEAKER_00: Now your hosts, John and Derek.

00:56SPEAKER_00: What's happening, everybody?

00:58SPEAKER_02: It's No Driving Gloves again.

01:02SPEAKER_02: We're back.

01:03SPEAKER_02: We're falling into this regular routine.

01:08SPEAKER_02: Still working on a couple of these big deep dives that we teach last fall.

01:13SPEAKER_02: Matter of fact, I was doing notes last night.

01:16SPEAKER_02: And we have three different ones we're working on.

01:20SPEAKER_02: It's just focusing.

01:21SPEAKER_02: I guess we probably need to take more Adderall or something.

01:24SPEAKER_02: If you know where you can get it, please let us know because I know there's an Adderall

01:27SPEAKER_03: shortage.

01:28SPEAKER_03: How are you doing this morning, Derek?

01:31SPEAKER_03: You know, I'm doing pretty good, John.

01:33SPEAKER_03: Just hanging out, like you said, getting into this new routine and doing a lot of reading

01:40SPEAKER_03: and talking to folks about our deep dives.

01:43SPEAKER_02: So I think we're on to some good stuff.

01:46SPEAKER_02: We'll see how those go.

01:48SPEAKER_02: I'm working on adjusting my schedule a little bit and we'll start having some conversations

01:54SPEAKER_02: episodes hopefully here in the next couple of weeks too, which will be obviously here

01:59SPEAKER_02: on the Make No Driving Gloves channel and the Conversations channel, which are the channels

02:04SPEAKER_02: exclusively in our news.

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02:15SPEAKER_02: I'm sure you.

02:17SPEAKER_02: Oh, so Derek, we're talking small block Chevy's or Chevrolet voters or inline sixes or something.

02:27SPEAKER_02: Didn't Chevy have some sort of announcement here recently?

02:29SPEAKER_03: Yeah, they did.

02:31SPEAKER_03: And I think it's a good time to talk about it.

02:34SPEAKER_03: It's probably going to wind up getting us into the whole green movement, right?

02:39SPEAKER_03: Where are we headed?

02:40SPEAKER_03: Electric hybrid, all that.

02:41SPEAKER_03: But I think we have to start with the news that came out of General Motors just, I mean,

02:48SPEAKER_03: what, a week or so ago.

02:50SPEAKER_03: A few weeks ago.

02:52SPEAKER_03: Yeah.

02:53SPEAKER_03: And we haven't really heard much more out of them at the time of this recording.

02:58SPEAKER_03: It was announced that they would be bringing out the next generation small block V8.

03:02SPEAKER_03: So an all new internal combustion V8 engine coming out of General Motors under the Chevrolet

03:09SPEAKER_03: brand name, the mark name of Chevrolet, the famed small block V8.

03:14SPEAKER_03: And, you know, I think we've talked about the history of the small block V8.

03:18SPEAKER_03: You know, the significance of the engine, of course, Ed Cole's involvement, Zora Arquist-Duntov's

03:25SPEAKER_03: involvement in that.

03:27SPEAKER_03: It's a great history because it is the engine that saved most of General Motors, but specifically

03:35SPEAKER_03: a lot of the Chevrolet lineup.

03:37SPEAKER_03: I think it's interesting to see Chevrolet announcing, well, General Motors announcing

03:42SPEAKER_03: that under the Chevrolet brand, a new small block V8, because, of course, it was not that

03:49SPEAKER_03: long ago that we had Mary Barra, who is the CEO of General Motors, making the all electric

03:58SPEAKER_03: promise that GM would be all electric fleet by 2035.

04:03SPEAKER_03: So we're, what, 12 years away from that right now?

04:07SPEAKER_03: I saw this news come out.

04:09SPEAKER_03: I don't know what you thought, John, but my head immediately went to basically seeing

04:16SPEAKER_03: this as GM saying without saying, we're not quite ready.

04:22SPEAKER_03: And I don't know that it's not General Motors' fault.

04:25SPEAKER_03: It's not Chevrolet's fault.

04:27SPEAKER_03: It's no one's fault.

04:28SPEAKER_03: I think it speaks more to where the American automotive infrastructure is for moving to

04:37SPEAKER_03: electric vehicles and where the auto industry needs to focus currently as they are building

04:45SPEAKER_03: up to what is next.

04:48SPEAKER_03: It's one of these, and I even thought it when Ford and General Motors started making these

04:54SPEAKER_03: promises of all electric.

04:56SPEAKER_03: Why can't we slowly work up to it?

04:59SPEAKER_03: Why can't we say, you know what, the next step is really making the internal combustion

05:05SPEAKER_03: engine as efficient and green as possible, and then it'll be introducing hybrid technology,

05:13SPEAKER_03: and then eventually when we get everything figured out in this world, we can start switching

05:19SPEAKER_03: away from the internal combustion engine.

05:21SPEAKER_03: And I think this is one of those small steps in that game plan.

05:25SPEAKER_02: I definitely thought it was interesting that they were throwing out this V8.

05:29SPEAKER_02: It's a substantial investment because, like you said, if they're supposed to be 100% electric,

05:35SPEAKER_02: they're investing $71.2 million a year into just this single engine.

05:42SPEAKER_02: It's an $854 million budget to design and build.

05:46SPEAKER_02: That's a substantial amount of money.

05:49SPEAKER_02: It's not a lot of money in the auto manufacturers world, a billion dollars here and a billion

05:53SPEAKER_02: dollars there.

05:55SPEAKER_02: It's still substantial, and I think it is saying something.

05:59SPEAKER_02: I've been in a lot of conversations recently in this move to all electric.

06:05SPEAKER_02: Toyota was adamantly against electric.

06:10SPEAKER_02: At least their CEO was until he just recently announced he was stepping down, and the guy

06:16SPEAKER_02: they're bringing in has already announced that Toyota is way behind this electric curve,

06:20SPEAKER_02: and they will be playing catch-up.

06:22SPEAKER_02: The conversations I've been in are exactly what you said.

06:26SPEAKER_02: Maybe this should be a best of both worlds, and maybe this is General Motors saying,

06:32SPEAKER_02: indirectly, hybrids are where it's at.

06:36SPEAKER_02: When you do a hybrid, you can have this new Fuel-E-Fish head, clean-burning V8 or whatever

06:44SPEAKER_02: technology, and you can have the electric also.

06:48SPEAKER_02: So when you're doing your commuting bouncing around town, you can do it all electric.

06:54SPEAKER_02: You can charge up at home, and it's easy to charge up overnight without a 400-watt charger

07:01SPEAKER_02: or 300-watt charger at your home.

07:04SPEAKER_02: You can have something small, a little bit less of an investment there.

07:08SPEAKER_02: You charge the car up overnight.

07:10SPEAKER_02: You drive to and from work, no problem.

07:12SPEAKER_02: But when you are not doing that commuting and you decide to take a little weekend trip

07:17SPEAKER_02: or you go on vacation, and you go outside the city limits, which doesn't happen, often

07:23SPEAKER_02: for most people, but that's why everybody wants a 300, 400, 500-mile range electric car.

07:30SPEAKER_02: What if that three days a year that I decide to go to, name it, Grandma's whatever, go skiing?

07:39SPEAKER_02: I need that kind of range.

07:41SPEAKER_02: So you spend all this money for all of this battery, all of this weight that the car now

07:47SPEAKER_02: has to haul around at all of this indirect environmental impact that you never see in

07:54SPEAKER_02: the manufacturing of the batteries, et cetera.

07:57SPEAKER_02: When you have this hybrid that only has to do a little bit of commuting, the battery pack's much smaller.

08:02SPEAKER_02: So the environmental impact on the manufacturing of the battery pack's less.

08:06SPEAKER_02: The expense of replacing the battery pack's less.

08:09SPEAKER_02: The expense of keeping the vehicle charged is less.

08:13SPEAKER_02: And then you still have this motor that's there for the long trips.

08:19SPEAKER_02: My first really big step into almost jumping into this world was to buy Chevrolet Volt,

08:27SPEAKER_02: which is exactly this technology where you have a vehicle that runs on electric.

08:34SPEAKER_02: You get 30 or 40 miles on the electric charge, and then it switches over to gas.

08:40SPEAKER_02: Now, the gas isn't directly driving the wheels of the drivetrain and the transmission,

08:46SPEAKER_02: so we're not adding the complexity back yet.

08:48SPEAKER_02: The engine is just generating power.

08:53SPEAKER_02: It's basically an onboard generator to recharge the batteries so that you maintain driving like that.

08:58SPEAKER_02: Maybe with this V8, it's a slight step away where the V8, it's going to be like one of these

09:04SPEAKER_02: Like one of these integrate hybrid systems like one of the supercars have where it's a gasoline motor does all of this,

09:10SPEAKER_02: and then for your extra boost of power, it's electric.

09:15SPEAKER_02: Honestly, I think that's the way technology needs to go right.

09:19SPEAKER_02: For this whole industry to switch over to electric in the next decade, decade and a half, is not conceivable in some way.

09:30SPEAKER_02: And I think this is Chevrolet's way of saying, we know this, but if we say it, we're going to be a target for everybody out there.

09:40SPEAKER_02: So we're going to do this.

09:42SPEAKER_02: And then as the industry realizes, the government starts to realize and the government starting to realize that, hey, wait, there's a problem here.

09:51SPEAKER_02: And we start having rolling blackouts across the world because of electric cars charging, et cetera.

09:58SPEAKER_02: I think this is a really neat piece of technology.

10:01SPEAKER_02: So that's our opinions on why this thing exists.

10:04SPEAKER_02: Tell us a little about what it is, Jerry.

10:07SPEAKER_02: It's an engine, John.

10:11SPEAKER_02: I don't know what else you said.

10:13SPEAKER_02: What's what's what's it make?

10:14SPEAKER_02: What makes a radically different than the V8 that I had in my 55 shown?

10:18SPEAKER_03: Like I said, unless you've seen something come out that I haven't, there hasn't been a lot of announcement on what this engine is going to be exactly.

10:26SPEAKER_03: Have I missed something?

10:27SPEAKER_03: Let's start there because I've not just wondered if you're inside conversations and that you've learned any.

10:33SPEAKER_03: Now, my contacts have been keeping a pretty pretty tight lipped about exactly what this engine is.

10:40SPEAKER_03: But I mean, we can we can get us right.

10:43SPEAKER_03: I mean, we can we can or at least make some educated guesses here that it's it's going to be the most efficient small block V8 ever brought out.

10:55SPEAKER_03: You know, they're going to make sure that happens.

10:58SPEAKER_03: I mean, they're saying right now that it's going to be for trucks and SUVs.

11:03SPEAKER_03: We do. We've heard that so far.

11:06SPEAKER_03: Right now, my guess is also, you know, this will become part of the new C8 moving into the ninth generation C9 Corvette.

11:21SPEAKER_03: We'll use this small block V8 in some way.

11:25SPEAKER_03: And we just saw within the last month, the unveiling of the E-Ray Corvette, which is hybrid, one of the fastest Corvettes built to this day.

11:36SPEAKER_03: And, you know, because of the hybrid technology, they're using somewhat similar to the what was it?

11:42SPEAKER_03: The McLaren P1 that used the similar hybrid system.

11:47SPEAKER_03: I think they're going to show with this V8 that engines, internal combustion engines can become cleaner, more efficient and be used in hybrid systems to help reduce emissions.

12:02SPEAKER_03: And like you said, John, you know, only use that engine when it's absolutely necessary.

12:10SPEAKER_03: Right. You use the electric system.

12:13SPEAKER_03: When it's charged up, when you're doing short range driving, all of that.

12:19SPEAKER_03: But then, yeah, if you're towing with a truck or if you're going a long distance, then that small new small block V8 is probably going to come into play.

12:31SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's at least my guesses on where this is going.

12:36SPEAKER_03: You know, as you said, John, and as everybody on the show knows, I have in turn, you know, contacts at General Motors.

12:44SPEAKER_03: They don't say a lot about what's coming up as many of the folks like to say at General Motors.

12:51SPEAKER_03: We don't talk about future product, which is a great line.

12:56SPEAKER_03: I also have the chance to talk to some of the retired folks that are out there from General Motors.

13:01SPEAKER_03: And, yeah, I think getting to have those conversations, they kind of lean towards the same opinions that you and I are talking about, which is the world is not ready for this.

13:16SPEAKER_03: The world is not ready for an all electric automotive transportation platform.

13:23SPEAKER_03: Not only is it going to be hard on the auto companies, the car companies to build these, figure out the science, figure out the technology, figure out everything that it's going to take.

13:34SPEAKER_03: But we have to think that on the flip side, there has to be the infrastructure for charging.

13:39SPEAKER_03: Like you talked about, John, you know, you start rolling this out around the world and then all of a sudden all of the electrical grids are over tasked and we start having rolling brownouts.

13:51SPEAKER_03: We don't want that.

13:52SPEAKER_03: I think everybody that listens knows we don't like to get political on this podcast.

13:58SPEAKER_03: We try to stay away from it.

14:00SPEAKER_03: We all have differing views in this world and that's OK.

14:04SPEAKER_03: But we have to also look at what that battery technology and electric motor technology, what resources are needed for those.

14:17SPEAKER_03: What type of extraction methods are being used to get those resources?

14:25SPEAKER_03: You know, you think about lithium batteries, lithium mining in Africa and places like that.

14:32SPEAKER_03: And what environmental impact is that going to have?

14:36SPEAKER_03: And then one of the big things that often gets forgotten about is you have to move that lithium that has been mined to a lithium processing plant, usually shipped over the ocean to another country, processed.

14:54SPEAKER_03: And then that processed lithium that is now battery packs or whatever it's being put into now has to be shipped around the world oftentimes on freighters on the open ocean.

15:07SPEAKER_03: I think we've mentioned it on the show before, actually.

15:10SPEAKER_03: If you don't know about those massive freighters that are out on the ocean, I encourage everybody to read up on it and read about the engines that they're using and the fuels that they use to move around out on the open ocean because it is not very clean technology.

15:32SPEAKER_03: We have to, again, I'm not trying to be political, but we have to take into consideration every step and every factor of turning our automotive industry and the platform they are using to power the automobiles to become greener.

15:48SPEAKER_03: We have to take into account every step to make sure that what we are doing is the best method and the cleanest and most efficient way to move.

16:00SPEAKER_03: So I think the introduction of an all-new V8 is a clue that we're starting to look at.

16:07SPEAKER_03: Maybe all-electric is not the best way yet.

16:11SPEAKER_03: And I will put that comma yet in there because it just takes development to get there.

16:18SPEAKER_03: And we have to remember, as we've talked about many times, and I always bring up, electric cars have been around as long as the automobile has existed.

16:27SPEAKER_03: They have been around since the 1800s.

16:30SPEAKER_03: They've been playing with them.

16:32SPEAKER_03: Thomas Edison famously played around with an electric vehicle.

16:36SPEAKER_03: Ferdinand Porsche played around with hybrid technology as early as the 1890s.

16:42SPEAKER_03: The Loner Porsches were an electric internal combustion hybrid.

16:48SPEAKER_03: They had hub motors.

16:49SPEAKER_03: They had electric hub motors at the turn of the last century, 1800s to the 1900s.

16:55SPEAKER_03: This is nothing new.

16:56SPEAKER_03: It's figuring it out and making it work the best it can, the most efficiently it can, and the cleanest it can for our world.

17:07SPEAKER_02: You said something there.

17:09SPEAKER_02: So was Edison's car alternating current?

17:13SPEAKER_02: And did Tesla have one way back then?

17:16SPEAKER_03: No, I'm pretty sure it was still direct current.

17:21SPEAKER_03: I don't think he figured out how to make his batteries to light.

17:24SPEAKER_03: His batteries alternate in current.

17:27SPEAKER_03: And no, I don't know that Tesla ever played with any automobiles.

17:31SPEAKER_03: I never come across that.

17:33SPEAKER_03: If I'm wrong, somebody correct me.

17:35SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, Edison was into that stuff, right?

17:37SPEAKER_02: He was always experimenting.

17:39SPEAKER_02: I don't know if we're talking about this Chevrolet Mugger or if we're actually talking about this conversion to electric.

17:46SPEAKER_02: The other thing that people, what I read this week, and I haven't seen it translate over to the electric hearted bait, that late-meat is at the lowest point it's been in decades.

18:01SPEAKER_02: Another one of those big reservoirs out west is just about to the point where the hydroelectric dam that it feeds, it's almost too low for that dam to produce power.

18:15SPEAKER_02: Right now, the West Coast is in trouble with electricity.

18:19SPEAKER_02: And then we now want to add further burden to that.

18:24SPEAKER_02: Like you said, this world relies, every piece of this world relies on another piece of something.

18:32SPEAKER_02: It's weird to think that the water shortage is possibly going to hurt the electric car mood.

18:40SPEAKER_02: How do those two relate?

18:42SPEAKER_02: A lot of electricity is produced by water.

18:45SPEAKER_02: I recently heard podcast Mike Rose of Texas Politics, However You Wish, and he had somebody on there who was very pro-nuclear.

18:56SPEAKER_02: It's a way to go, and it's a lot different than three-mile-line wind in Chernobyl technology now, but a whole different world.

19:05SPEAKER_02: I think there's a power plant down the street here in Alabama that produces a lot of power for the Southeast.

19:11SPEAKER_02: But I just, like you said, found it interesting that Chevrolet is going to introduce this motor,

19:17SPEAKER_02: found it interesting doing a little bit of a dive into the history of the General Motors VGA.

19:23SPEAKER_02: One article I read said that this is, what, the sixth?

19:28SPEAKER_02: Yeah, this will be the sixth generation of the small block V8.

19:34SPEAKER_02: You have the original pushrod, I'm guessing the 265s, the, what was the first displacement? It was 265.

19:44SPEAKER_02: 283, we had the 327 developed to 400 or 350, 350, 400.

19:54SPEAKER_02: And to me those were basically all the same motors, they just made the holes different sizes, made the piston travel shorter.

20:02SPEAKER_02: And then you get into the LT1, and wasn't the ZR1 an LT5?

20:09SPEAKER_02: Yes.

20:11SPEAKER_02: And is the ZR1 LT5 considered in that Chevrolet V8 line of families, because isn't it the only overhead cam motor?

20:22SPEAKER_02: Sorry, you got me thinking here, John.

20:24SPEAKER_02: The stuff's not overhead cam.

20:26SPEAKER_02: Right, no it's not. So, yeah, I believe it is.

20:29SPEAKER_02: The LT5 was dual overhead cams on each cylinder bank, so technically had four overhead cams.

20:36SPEAKER_02: Right, so developed in...

20:38SPEAKER_02: Which, go back to the, I remember the quad cam.

20:41SPEAKER_02: What was it, the Olds quad four, things like that, yeah, the quad cam or something.

20:46SPEAKER_02: So we'll leave the Mercury derived engine out of it.

20:50SPEAKER_02: LT's were popular for years.

20:53SPEAKER_02: I was just talking to somebody recently about the, he's a local automotive broker, and he's getting a 1996 Dewey Roadmaster with like 36,000 miles, Roadmaster wagon.

21:03SPEAKER_02: Those are phenomenal cars.

21:08SPEAKER_02: I used to have a friend, one of the cars I've owned in the past, the guy swarmed by the things, 5,000 miles of them, and he was just like,

21:16SPEAKER_02: Basically a Corvette motor, high 20s for miles per gallon, and big massive things that rolled forever.

21:23SPEAKER_02: And when they broke, you could go to AutoZone and buy anything you needed for.

21:28SPEAKER_02: I still think they're one of the best cars out there, even though now we're looking at effectively a 30 year old car.

21:35SPEAKER_02: That's the thing about the, you know, Ed Kohl's design of the small block V8.

21:41SPEAKER_03: The way he designed it and exactly what he was trying to do was make as versatile a V8 engine as he possibly could.

21:50SPEAKER_03: And I think GM has proven that over time that Ed Kohl was right and what Ed Kohl designed is probably the greatest V8 engine that has ever been built.

22:00SPEAKER_03: And I think that's the thing about the, the design of the small block V8.

22:07SPEAKER_03: I think GM has proven that over time that Ed Kohl was right and what Ed Kohl designed is probably the greatest V8 engine that has ever been designed.

22:22SPEAKER_03: There's not much beating a Chevrolet small block V8.

22:26SPEAKER_03: It goes all the way back to Zora's letter that Chevrolet was behind the ball because Ford had the flathead V8 since 1932.

22:39SPEAKER_03: GM didn't come out with a new V8, okay?

22:44SPEAKER_03: Chevrolet had a V8 before Ford had a V8, okay?

22:50SPEAKER_03: It only lasted for two years.

22:53SPEAKER_03: It was a very complicated early engine in the teens.

22:57SPEAKER_03: It was, it's a cool engine.

22:59SPEAKER_03: There's not many examples out there of it, but it is rudimentary compared to the flathead V8 and what would become the small blocks.

23:08SPEAKER_03: This small block V8 engine is so versatile and they've proven it over the years with all of these different designs, even up to what's running in the Corvette, the C8 Corvette today.

23:20SPEAKER_03: That, yeah, I guess it surprises me or it surprised us in some ways that they announced a new version of it, but it probably shouldn't because it is so versatile.

23:33SPEAKER_03: It can be used in so many ways.

23:35SPEAKER_02: You know, they're just making the best of it again, as I think Ed Kohl had hoped.

23:41SPEAKER_02: People say that the Chevrolet small block V8 goes back to antique 55.

23:46SPEAKER_02: You know, we just, we got, you know, I went out to the LTs and then of course you have the LS6 came out, LS1 motors, the LS7s, all these.

23:59SPEAKER_02: And now it's every couple of years, boom, boom, boom, there seems to be a change.

24:04SPEAKER_02: And I don't know, are they radically different motors or they really can, if you took an LS7,

24:15SPEAKER_02: how much of that goes back to the 1955 to 65?

24:23SPEAKER_02: There's eight cylinders, there's a crankshaft, there's in cam or in block cam, but is it really the same motor?

24:32SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's been, this is, or in all these versions, basically the only difference is four and stroke, which then I would say it's the same.

24:42SPEAKER_02: And the head design and the intake design, is that where the radical changes?

24:49SPEAKER_03: I don't really know if...

24:52SPEAKER_03: Unless something has changed, and I'm not up on the newest iterations of the small block V8,

25:02SPEAKER_03: I know at the very beginning in the push rod era, all of that, the biggest thing about the way that Ed had designed the engine and the small block was that it all revolved around the bore spacing.

25:19SPEAKER_03: So the center, you know, center spacing of the bore on the engine, and they were always the same as they continued to build it.

25:28SPEAKER_02: But I'm trying to, and I'm trying to remember, it was like four, it was around four and a half inch bore spacing.

25:36SPEAKER_02: Oh, here it is. I'm looking it up real quick so I don't get something wrong. It was all based around 4.4 inch bore spacing.

25:44SPEAKER_02: You say that, and this number pops out to me because I'm reading, I'm in this thing on the LS7, still based on the original 4.4 inch bore spacing.

25:53SPEAKER_02: The LS7 uses blah blah blah blah blah, Preston cylinder liners and forged caps, you know, the techno, I guess, yes, yes, it's effectively the same thing.

26:04SPEAKER_02: Because my question was derived when you were talking about the longevity of this motor, how long it's been, and Chevrolet V4.

26:13SPEAKER_02: I'm trying to think in my life, in my driving, which is still a couple of decades now, we go from our, say, FoxBotting 5.0 Mustangs.

26:26SPEAKER_02: Then Ford came out with the, what, radical modular V8 that you, you know, it's two pieces of a block that bolted together and that kind of failed.

26:37SPEAKER_02: And then they went to some other design of V8, and then there, the Coyote, and I don't think any of those motors really, obviously the modular really didn't carry anything over from anybody else.

26:53SPEAKER_02: Maybe there is something to be said about that original design and that, what are we, 70ish years later? 68 years later?

27:03SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but, well, coming up on 70, yeah, another two years of anniversary.

27:08SPEAKER_02: You know, hats off to you, General Motors, made that initial investment, you know, you saw the electric car coming 70 years ago, and you said, we're just going to build this motor and we're going to plug it along until everything goes electric.

27:23SPEAKER_03: Do you think that was the thinking?

27:26SPEAKER_03: I don't think that's what Ed Cole was thinking.

27:29SPEAKER_03: Although Ed was a, Ed was a genius.

27:33SPEAKER_03: Ed was an engineering mastermind.

27:36SPEAKER_03: Ed was not afraid of anything within, you know, the purview of mechanical engineering.

27:46SPEAKER_03: Now, I mean, he comes up with small block V8.

27:49SPEAKER_03: He's involved in the early automatic transmissions with, you know, Hydromatic.

27:56SPEAKER_03: He even in the 1960s, you know, right, basically right before his retirement from General Motors as president of Chevrolet, he is the one that started looking into the Wankel rotary engines and had a rotary engine program going at General Motors, trying to figure out if it was a good way to go.

28:19SPEAKER_03: So, you know, Ed wasn't afraid of thinking about anything.

28:24SPEAKER_03: One of my favorite stories about Ed and something I didn't know until I got to know the Cole family is, you know, GM was a supplier of the military, right?

28:36SPEAKER_03: They were a military contractor during the wars, during peacetime.

28:41SPEAKER_03: They build stuff. They design stuff, you know, items for the military.

28:46SPEAKER_03: And Ed was integral in fixing the original M16.

28:52SPEAKER_03: When they were having problems with the original version of the M16A1 in Vietnam very early on in the war, the Army sent out a call to all contractors to see if they could figure out how to fix it.

29:07SPEAKER_03: It came across Ed Cole's desk.

29:09SPEAKER_03: He looked at it and basically said, this is pretty much how an automatic transmission works.

29:15SPEAKER_03: Took it over to the Hydromatic Division, sat down with the engineers.

29:19SPEAKER_03: They re-engineered it, and that's why GM built almost all of the M16A1s that went over to Vietnam at the Hydromatic Division, because they figured out how to keep the gun from jamming and, you know, getting the back pressure flow and all the gas flows correct to make it a fully automatic weapon.

29:39SPEAKER_03: He wasn't afraid of anything. So I think if he had the opportunity to be around and think about hybrid technology with the small block V8, I think he'd be all for it, because I think it would be a challenge to him.

29:51SPEAKER_02: He would take it on, and he would figure out a fantastic way to make it happen.

29:59SPEAKER_02: That was interesting.

30:01SPEAKER_02: I said, well, wrap it up there, because it's a good way of ending the show talking about the diversity of Ed Cole.

30:09SPEAKER_02: You know, we've learned more about this motor and things trickle through.

30:13SPEAKER_02: They say it's a few years away, and the investment is putting like $800 into various engine plants and designing almost $580 million of it's going to the GM Flint, Michigan engine plant, which I guess makes blocks heads, everything to make the unit.

30:37SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of other, they're putting a million, hundreds of millions of dollars into many different facilities to get ready to produce this motor.

30:47SPEAKER_02: So, I don't know, let's see what's going to show up in 2025 or 2026.

30:54SPEAKER_02: I think it's exciting.

30:56SPEAKER_02: I think that was an interesting conversation and a couple of, you know, a little bit more opinionated than fact there, a little dive into history.

31:05SPEAKER_02: I'm sure we'll be around in two years to review whether or not we were right or wrong.

31:10SPEAKER_03: I hope I will around in two years.

31:12SPEAKER_03: And we know our listeners will, I'm referring to no tribe.

31:18SPEAKER_03: Oh, okay.

31:20SPEAKER_03: I mean, you're getting up there in age, John.

31:24SPEAKER_03: I mean, yeah, I'm still kind of young, so.

31:28SPEAKER_02: Tell me about it.

31:30SPEAKER_02: I'm not as fat as I've ever been, but I'm getting there.

31:34SPEAKER_02: I'm trying to cut back.

31:36SPEAKER_02: If I can totally cut soda out of my life, I lose 20 pounds almost overnight.

31:41SPEAKER_03: You know about my physical.

31:44SPEAKER_03: We could have the no driving gloves health segment.

31:47SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but that's going to be it for this exciting episode of no driving gloves.

31:53SPEAKER_02: No driving gloves dot com.

31:56SPEAKER_02: Oh, I forgot to mention our fur dozer buddies.

32:00SPEAKER_02: Check them out.

32:01SPEAKER_02: I've got this new cloth interior car.

32:03SPEAKER_02: And then I bought a neoprene seat cover on Clarence Island, Walmart.

32:07SPEAKER_02: And it even helps with that.

32:09SPEAKER_02: It's amazing how much dog hair even my non shedding dog puts out.

32:13SPEAKER_02: You know, I was even thinking about maybe by a new used car, the previous owners had a dog.

32:19SPEAKER_02: But now my little dog, I guess, does shed.

32:22SPEAKER_02: I guess there's a reason her hair stays as long as her first stages.

32:26SPEAKER_02: Be sure to check out the fur dozer on our website.

32:28SPEAKER_02: I'd love to say visit the website, visit Facebook page, check us out, like, share, subscribe.

32:35SPEAKER_02: And that's the best thing you guys can do.

32:37SPEAKER_02: Tell a friend about us.

32:39SPEAKER_02: Click that little share button and share this to one of your car buddies.

32:42SPEAKER_02: Let's get it out of here.

32:44SPEAKER_02: No driving gloves is back in a big way.

32:46SPEAKER_02: Evergreen episodes, current events, multiple channels.

32:50SPEAKER_01: And also you can listen to exactly anything else out of you tonight.

32:55SPEAKER_01: Derek, keep listening.

32:57SPEAKER_01: And like John said, share us with a friend.

33:00SPEAKER_01: This show was a part of the Doe Driving Gloves Network produced and edited by John and Yanny.

33:07SPEAKER_01: A Plaidixity podcast with voice work by Gary Conger.

33:12SPEAKER_01: So until the next, take that.