Is there a video without the idiotic background sound? Who in their right mind posts a video of a car about the sound and puts a background music?

Anyways, that sound is definitely NOT naturally aspirated. Its a typical muted twin turbo V-8 that you see anything from M5 to E63AMG to 570/675/720s to you name it what else. I drive a shelby gt350 so i know what flat plane crank v8 sounds like.

500 hp out of 5.5 L nat asp is quite respectible. Especially when you consider it is air/fuel restricted under BoP rules. Pretty sure they run 106 Octane race fuel and wind to over 8k rpm. The first year they ran the 5.5 at Lemans they had failures. RACE DIRECTOR Doug Fehan said they later resimulated the race on a dyno and it failed again at around the same time(i think 18 hrs).. the cam shaft was fatigue twisting from the higher RPM and alllowed the furthest away cylinder from the cam gear to have piston valve contact. Crazy stuff.

You Tube

Thats a twin turbo engine.

I dont know what to say. Doesnt this go against Corvette culture? Many people buy this car for its sound and character.

Its the twin turbo bark you hear at upshifts, very typical. I have about 45,000 miles in twin turbo v8s using various exhausts. I know how they sound.

plus, given the sheer size of that car, there is just no way they will have a powerful engine without twin turbo v8. A supercharger wont fit and they cant bring a pure N/A engine.

its much easier to have 1 twin turbo engine as underlying architecture and add more power for each variant like mclaren does. Mclaren has the same block design and same architecture for all their cars be it $250k 570s or million dollar senna.

This is getting a little weird. There's no such thing as a "twin turbo bark". Any engine may or may not do it, depending on what's done with the fueling and spark during the shift. This particular M8 is probably a dual-clutch transmission, which means it probably interrupts fuel or ignition (or both) on the upshift. But even A8 automatics do this on some full-throttle up-shifts, so they will "bark" on some upshifts too. What you can hear on some turbos is a blowoff valve opening during a shift, but a DCT or automatic would be unlikely to do this, cutting fuel or ignition instead to preserve boost.

Also, on some cars, they'll cut the spark, but not the fueling, so a backfire is heard on an upshift, and that's another sort of "bark".
Oh geez, of course a supercharger would fit. There is much more height available in the mid-engine, than under the C7 hood. But Corvette doesn't usually use their fastest combination in the first model year, so it might start out with something as simple as a normally aspirated LT1, which is a very impressive engine. Heck, lots of overhead cam engines can't put down more power, especially in as small a package, so I wouldn't consider GM engineers anything to thumb my nose at.
Unlike McLaren, GM has a plethora of off-the-shelf engine platforms to choose from, including the new Cadillac twin-turbo, so their choices are much less limited than McLaren's. Why would anyone expect McLaren's and GM's strategies to be the same?

it has twin turbos in the engine valley.. heads are on reversed with exhaust ports facing inward and intake ports outward. the Caddy designed OHC V8 engines have already been revealed. 4.2 and 5.2 liter is the displacement I believe. I can see heat related challenges for them on the track.

at some point not far off the venerable smallblock pushrod will say goodbye. In the IMSA factory racing Vettes as well. Some variation of the 4.2 Twin turbo is the likely replacement. Maybe less displacement or lower boost than the street version in a significantly lighter car.

Whatever the engine is, it sounds like ****. GM is in for a big one when their entire waxer/lawn chair ownerbase who buys their cars for the big american v8 burble hears it when first reviews come out.

Please check back with your friend about LeMan’s 2010 and the cam failure....and the computer similuated dyno rerun of the race with virtually identical results stemming from cam twist due to higher revs being run in the 5.5 L as per Doug Fehan af Road America directly to my ears. The test engine blew up almost at exactly the same number of hours running. . : “As part of the GT regulations for 2010, the engine would be downsized to 5.5L to comply with the new engine displacement limits. At 2010 24 Hours of Le Mans, factory GT2 Corvettes retired after engine problems and a collision with Anthony Davidson's Peugeot. Only one of 4 Corvettes finished the race,( in GT Am class.)”