The C7 Corvette is coming! Are you as excited as we are? Our friends at General Motors/Chevrolet have taken the social media outlets by storm with their #one13thirteen ad campaign. The C7 Corvette will be unclothed from its camo coverings on January 13th, 2013 to a sold out group of National Corvette Museum supporters and a limited group of journalists and industry insiders.

Last week Chevrolet unveiled the newly designed C7 logo at Petit LeMans with much fanfare. Here at the National Corvette Museum we offer C7 Lapel Pins (now sold out), C7 Logo Bricks and our smartphone C7 wallpaper ready for our Corvette faithful to purchase or download. Today Chevrolet has released information on the heart of the C7 Corvette, dubbed the LT1.

LT1 first was introduced in 1970 to the Chevrolet lineup and was an option on the Corvette from 1970 to 1972. Between 1970 and 1972 just shy of 5000 cars were produced with the LT1 engine with the solid lifters. The 1970 Corvettes packed the most punch with 370hp, and General Motors started detuning the engines to give oil companies some time to phase in lower octane levels for unleaded fuels needed for the future use of catalytic converters. 1971 LT1 Corvettes suffered a decrease to 330hp and the final year of the 1972 LT1 was at a meek 255hp.

The C4 Corvette in 1992 reintroduced the RPO Code LT1 as their base engine packing 300hp at 5,000 rpm and 330 lb-ft torque at 4,000 rpm. One big achievement for the LT1 was the introduction of the reverse cooling system. Traditional cooling methods route coolant through the water pump first then through the block to the heads. The LT1 engine routed coolant to start at the heads and then down through the block. This kept the heads cooler which allowed for greater power.

 

Sounds pretty interesting - wish they had given it a different name though.

 

looks like mods will be more difficult and more expensive with the increased complexity.

 

I think the software/PCM will be more of a roadblock initially than parts mods.

We'll surely see headers fairly quickly, followed soon after I'd assume by camshafts.

Cylinder heads will probably be a ways off I'd imagine, though I'm sure AFR and TFS will be all over working on a casting once released, if they don't have pre-production pieces now.

I was really hoping the LT1 name was a joke on the site - don't get me wrong, I loved my LT1, but it was probably the least loved GM motor. I definitely don't miss the optispark.

 

it has to be called an LT1, the cam is driving the DI pump .... but hey at least there is no optispark!!!!