The Aerotech Engine: A Hidden Gem in GM's History

As we take a closer look at some of the lesser-known engines from General Motors' history, one particular engine stands out - the Aerotech. This 2.4-liter dual overhead cam four-cylinder engine was GM's first full-in-house designed and built engine. It's easy to see why it didn't gain much traction in terms of popularity, but its unique features make it an interesting piece of engineering history.

One notable aspect of this engine is the way it was mounted - unlike traditional rack-and-pinion steering systems, where the steering rack is typically mounted on the cradle, the Aerotech's rack and pinion are actually mounted up on the firewall. Additionally, the tie rods connect just below the spring on the struts, which gives the steering a higher profile than most other vehicles. This design decision may have been intended to provide better weight distribution or handling characteristics.

The Aerotech engine was also notable for its emphasis on low-end torque and revving capabilities. It's said to be able to produce a pleasant exhaust note, even if it's not by any modern definition of 'fast'. The engine's redline is an impressive 6800 RPM, which suggests that it's capable of producing some significant power. However, the fact that it was shelved in favor of more conventional engines like the Ecotec means that it never got the chance to reach its full potential.

Interestingly, GM experimented with the Aerotech engine in a turbocharged form for use in the Cutlass Supreme. This experimental engine produced 250 horsepower with a single turbocharger and was even used as an Indianapolis 500 pace car in 1988. While the jetfire turbo did require some special fluids to function properly, it's clear that GM was pushing the boundaries of what was possible with internal combustion engines.

For those who may not be familiar, the Aerotech engine has a dedicated following among enthusiasts and collectors. It's easy to see why - this engine is both unique and fascinating, offering insights into GM's engineering decisions and innovative ideas that never quite came to fruition. With its sleek design and impressive capabilities, it's little wonder that this hidden gem of an engine remains popular among car enthusiasts today.

The Aerotech engine also raises interesting questions about the balance between form and function in automotive design. While some may see this engine as a relic of a bygone era, others appreciate its quirks and unique characteristics. As we continue to explore the history of GM's engines, it's clear that there are many fascinating stories waiting to be uncovered - and the Aerotech is definitely one of them.

When you think of iconic American muscle cars, it's easy to forget about the Aerotech engine's humble origins in a Cavalier. But this engine has its own story to tell - one of innovation, experimentation, and a commitment to pushing the boundaries of what was possible. As we delve deeper into the world of GM's lesser-known engines, we can only wonder what other hidden gems are waiting to be discovered.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enyou know sometimes feeling fast is as fun as being fast right because it's not really fast by any monitories but it's a pleasant exhaust note at least I mean yeah the engine sounds like it's working it gives effort while seeing effortless so that makes any sense yep so I mean you put your foot in it and enjoy watching the pack go online welcome to the episode of Jay Leno's Garage the car featuring today 1991 Oldsmobile Calais okay okay but before you turn away let me finish very rare car very high performance car in fact most car guys don't even know about this a lot of GM guys never even knew about this program it's pretty fascinating this is the engine here you'll learn about this in a minute but did I get your attention looks pretty cool doesn't it this is a what they call a quad 442 w41 package they're only Built about 200 of these it's a fascinating story I didn't know anything about these cars until I ran to this gentleman Jeff safranic Jeff come on in my friend good to see you thanks for bringing us today oh no trouble at all you know I I always like to learn new stuff and as much you think you know there's always some stuff you don't know sure and I was certainly involved in all deals in the 90s and I probably heard about this but didn't really give it a to do so tell us what we have here so this engine here is basically a General Motors Experimental engine from mid 80s GM teamed up with two engineering firms fueling and Baton engineering this engine is from fueling engineering they basically were building whatever they could for General Motors Aerotech project right I remember that yep and uh so the two companies built several engines um I believe fueling engineering is the one that one one out this particular one was a two liter twin turbo made about 1170 horsepower and this is 1991. this is 1985. this was before the cars even thought on paper the 1987 GM took the they had a long tail and short tail version of the Aerotech took them with driver AJ foyt to a test track down Texas AJ foyt said a closed closed course land speed record about 268 miles per hour I don't know if this is the exact engine but an engine identical to this there's two on display at the reels Museum in Michigan and this is the only other one that I know of that's in private hands so it's a two valve it's four valve per cylinder oh it is four valve yes it's four valve per cylinder this is a two liter d-stroked version um twin turbo it just seems so unusable reveal I mean it doesn't seem like when you always think in Oldsmobile well you think of the big you know the big V8s and everything and it's such a unique package and it almost looks like something designed in the 30s by Leo Goosen and and oftenhauser and all those guys right it definitely has a Harry Miller the factory production engine definitely has a offie look to it yeah um but uh like again this one was completely experimental and they they just wanted to go out and show exactly what they could do with what they had at the time I love the fact that the alternator is driven by the water pump you've got water and electricity together right yes that's a great idea the English have tried that yeah it's fascinating uh yeah I mean it's really cool so what was the idea they had to homologate this what the engine was was too powerful they thought well that's not a production engine they tried to shut them down so so the Kelly was produced 1985 1991 right um about 1986 1987 you had uh two two brothers um Paul and Carl hacker throughout Albany New York the they were a big Volkswagen road course Racers General Motors approached them so hey you want to drive Oldsmobiles and they just went out with these you know basically in-house only Built engines that just dominated the 2-liter three liter classes at the time and as time went on scca stepped in and said you know this engine is not available the public you can't you can't do this anymore so in comes the w41 package for 1991 GM produces 200 examples 15 of which received the RPO code c41 they were designated non-air conditioning cars they also got an engine oil cooler set up they were supposed to be strictly for the race teams to build and race right just to meet sec's homologation Rule now did this not get a lot of publicity back in the day I mean there's a lot going on so surprisingly um they're the Calais that you could get a an S model an SL model and then you could get a w40 model which featured the high output version of this engine at 180 horsepower and then the very limited production of w41 engine which was 190 horsepower you got a special geared transmission with this as well as a little bit different different suspension on this car versus a w40 so this one got a little more Road coursing tweaks to it manual transmission man all 200 were manual transmission five speed five speed okay yeah because it it didn't seem like you know I think we still had V8 in our heads in the early 90s it was the idea why would you get a small engine when you can get a big engine for the same price I mean they tried that with Pontiac they did the overhead cam 6 for a while and they made a performance version by the time you paid for the performance version you could have had a V8 you know I mean people think well that'd make any sense right and and so the idea of an Oldsmobile with a two liter or four-cylinder engine then I'm like what I think to most people you think of the Oldsmobile as you know right right yeah they they advertise these as not not your father's Oldsmobile right and they were you know GM was trying to go for a younger generation at the time um for sales um but was it a tough selling the 200 from what information little information is out there yeah all 200 were produced in the month of March in 1991. this car was actually sold to its race team early 1992 so they sat on Lots I think not that because they were a tough sales because nobody knew about them right you'd go and you'd see the automatic model and it was two thousand dollars less because it wasn't a performance package you're probably buying that instead right okay I probably knew about at the time I'm sure this is on the cover think I saw this engine on the cover of Hot Rod Magazine I I have that in my mind this partic this particular engine the the r d and the Aerotech project that in my eyes got a lot more publicity right than the actual and then the actual what came of it yeah because it just seemed incongruous civils why is Oldsmobile playing with a four cylinder you know just seemed weird you know right but uh it's a great looking motor I have to admit just from the sculptured form of it it looks it looks performance I love this bag of snake's headers here I mean this is yeah the production engine once you get under the hood um looks a lot different than this but it shares the offie look right with the with the cam covers and whatnot so a gear driven chain driven belt driven one so this engine is belt driven okay the production engine is timing chain driven with hydraulic tension yeah because they good luck finding a belt for this oh yeah and and you're talking a thousand horsepower difference between the Rd engine and the thousand horsepower difference 1170 to 190 so that wasn't on the details are really really black and black out on a lot of the things for this particular project so this is the one we're going to drive today yep okay well I think this is just fascinating uh it just looks so unassuming sitting here do you surprise people at stop lights with this thing with the way cars are today it's it's uh you know back in the day you could go to the drag strip with one of these and probably take on a five liter Mustang no problem right um but today everybody hides everything we have everybody has a sleeper so it's uh it's definitely a looker um it's definitely not the fastest thing I've ever driven but definitely goods and goes okay can we open the hood and see what the production engine looks like to from inside yep oh so it's transverse of course it's from wheel drive correct front-wheel drive yeah correct I remember the first time my my dad and I looked at cars my dad said that salesman why is the engine transverse okay we get more power more power transverse he goes well how does that work yeah this guy's salesman just lighting what he's talking about but you do lose a certain you do lose a certain amount right today by today's standards it's about if it were an automatic you lose about 25 so the Driveline manual 17 right yeah yeah yeah it was in line of course and it had to be further back correct and you'd have a lot trunks less trunk space and all that kind of stuff yeah yeah okay fascinating and about 190 horse which is pretty good for a 1990. for 91 it was one of one of the top performers GM head out um for 91 mile a year it it surprised a lot of people when they put it out you know what there's a lot of magazine articles out there um that that just show how ridiculous this thing was at the time yeah because uh I remember were you mentioned the comparison to the fox bodied Mustang we have one of the highway patrol cars here and it was a V8 with a little two barrel and it was you know you thought you used to have the you know the Mustang that chases Porsches or something right they were in the ad for and you go right well I don't know what you're chasing maybe a 1948 gramon car with 35 horsepower yeah you're not going to catch anybody missing so this really would have been uh certainly the equal of anything was available right once you once you got into the 80s and and the big three started to get choked out by emissions all right you know four-cylinder was the way to go you could do a lot more with a lot less yeah this is a proof of it okay what else is here that's different no well nothing it's pretty standard I mean they they covered the I miss seeing that I like seeing the twin uh twin yep between the cam covers they were it's a idi cover it's totally integrated um two coil packs with uh plug boots um so there's no plug wires there's obviously no distributor no cap or anything like that to go bad I kind of expected a bar bracing across the front here but now going from chalk Tower to shock Tower but I guess they didn't these things were yeah these things were pretty rigid a lot of the a lot of the race teams did did brace a lot there's a lot different bracing in the race cars obviously because I think in 90 or 91 certainly the late 80s the mid-range Oldsmobile was the best selling car in America right it was big had four doors had a V8 and it was the most popular car you could get nobody predicted it would be out of business within 20 years decade or so a little bit yeah I mean it just goes to show you you never know yep all right well very cool very nice all right well yeah let's put this down again foreign can we open the hood on the racing version absolutely you know this looks pretty production to me it doesn't look that all different under the hood is it mostly internal is that right so basic differences um between the street version versus what GM produced for the race teams to build these as you can see has a lack of air conditioning components right they added in a oil cooler system for the engine and it's rumored that they got baffled gas tanks but not confirmed and they are noticeably a little lighter because they didn't get any sound deadening material in the floor versus A Streetcar that has it right all of them had ABS but these had tunable ABS computers for different tracks they could set you know front more brake rear more brake they were doing it electronically instead of with a bias adjuster and those computers like the size of a suitcase back in the day so the ABS computer is here um they could they could tune that through the OBD2 port right um and then the ECM for the engine is up under the dashboard on the passenger side and they actually had data logging technology for these things floppy floppy disk drives right where they could go and test run these things go back to what of a computer they had at the time and look at that and change fuel Maps yeah because OBD didn't become mandatory until 96 right so your OBD1 is in GM vehicles as early as 1984 I believe that would be obd0 this car is what they consider OBD1 which is about 1988 to 1995 1996 would be OBD2 which is what they're currently phasing out now yeah but 96 is the first year mandatory every car had to do it correct you had to plug in okay very cool now what are these parts you got over here so these engines may look the same on the outside but internally they're completely different animals this one in particular is near about 240 horsepower um reason for that um it's got a Kellogg Forge lightweight crankshaft in it as well as some jet titanium rods they're about 100 grams less than a factory Rod we free up that rotating mask I mean that factory rod looks like something from the 1940s it just right technology hasn't changed too much don't reinvent the wheel but the jet Rod is obviously much lighter much stronger and then as I said they had data logging capabilities that's basically what the engine computer was this was this particular one was from gmr D that they would they would trade files because it's just a removable eprom chip in there right on back and forth to try and improve on it a crank like that to make today would cost you what 15 grand 20. oh for I I would assume in the neighborhood of that yeah for sure I'm sure they weren't much cheaper back then either yeah yeah because it's all just machine work isn't it you just no counterweights on it right nope um so that that is the basic difference on a factory crank the timing trigger wheel here is actually a full cast counterweight and what are those all Factory books so these are actually the two original log books for this car um okay this car was raced from about the middle of 1992 on the previous owner that I purchased it from was racing it up until 2009. just the idea that they're using books as opposed to putting in a computer you know something you'd have I mean just it seems like they see that and gear approved look at that yep that's about all those books are for for safety occasionally they'll they'll drill a small hole in the cage to make sure the pipe thickness is correct um you know make sure you're not unsafely racing right right I think you can see it's all all stamped different races oh that's kind of that's a cool Pizza of uh thank you kit to go with it there very nice well let's uh can we take this one for a ride absolutely let's see what if I can we'll shut this thing down here here we go foreign this was not street legal but this one is come on let's take it for a ride sure oh Crush velor I remember the 90s smooth surprisingly they were notorious for how harsh the engine ran well the best thing to do with the whole car is drive it you know right sitting is the worst thing oh I know it goes pretty good yeah yeah it's got some it's got some pickup so pep as my dad would say try the racers like these things the power band was like 2 800 up the red line and it's fun because it's not crazy horsepower it doesn't overpower the car right it doesn't overpower the chassis discs in front drums and back is that what it is yep so the race version didn't have four wheel discs so the race version has um the standard setup in the front right it's got oversized aluminum drums oh yeah well they were famous for Buick and Oldsmobile had those great aluminum brake drums I remember this was 91 was the first year GM started to implement their abs on these things and uh that they just did they did so much tuning with the race car with the race teams um to get them to handle you know this is always the era that weird fabric stuff you know right everything is everything's not quite plastic but not quite leather yeah yeah it's that like pleather you know yeah it's like yeah nice yep it's close close ratio uh 394 final drive the race car is a little more difficult to drive it's got a torsion limited slip differential in it yeah um so that grips a lot harder it's actually pretty difficult to turn and I'm I really question how those guys got them around road courses back in the day but I remember before then the early Shelby's had the Detroit Locker rear end right you go you go around a corner strip the tire it's like you're breaking a guy's neck crack what was uh I I broke a tooth I you know no I guess oh I guess not you know but just all the time right but they were pretty bulletproof weren't they they didn't break no you know it's a shame they didn't make like a Fastback Coop or some kind of special because this could have challenged a lot of the Imports of it right so they there there was a two-door four-door bottle available you could get this in the four-door um the concepts of these in like 1984 1985 they had a two-door um wagon-back kind of like a Civic hatchback style thing right um obviously I've never never met fruition it's but that's how they advertise these things because they were putting out better horsepower than the other Hondas or Toyotas they had at the time um you know the the race teams a couple the couple of the points sheets that I have from the end of the year where these things were winning the Championships first second and third were these things and then the closest thing they can touch them were turbo mr2s yeah but once you lose your reputation it takes a long time you know right I mean they glided for so many years the reputation remember the Japanese started beating him and was like oh yeah what are we gonna do yeah and now like that you know and a lot of that still lingers you have a whole generation because I'm not buying an American car right but you know to me I think it's equal to anything that's out there I mean I think General Motors is all Engineers now oh yeah that's what I love about it I mean there's nobody else in the world can build the Corvette for 65 thousand dollars and do it in a union shop right using quality product because you know when I think came out I thought oh it's going to have some to our converter transmission it'll steel frame with some carbon pieces hanging on no no they it's all magnesium and the double clutch transmission yeah this the c8's definitely definitely a beautiful car yeah I drove the Z06 and that was really impressive you know the electric Corvette coming too that's oh yeah there's an electric everything coming I know I know that's the scary part it's like unfortunately for me like I'm a mechanic by trade so I'm gonna have to learn it and work on it before I can read it but you'll have work for the rest of your life oh yeah as long as long as the government doesn't crack down on you know ridiculously on the ice engines it's I'll be fine but well I don't think any you know I think it actually saves I think because you can't can build you can't continue to have one of their 15 billion cars on the some crazy thing yeah how are you gonna you can't get rid of them all at once that's right but the idea of being I I think it's like the horse horse is now for recreation right and they're well taken care of right I mean you use your electric car during the week to go to work and then you take your old car for the weekend yeah you're a Ferrari or or this or anything out on the weekend you zip around the hills I'm sure that's a good way to look at it yeah and and then guys like yourself become Specialists you're not just a mechanic now you're a specialist and right people come to you because they have one of these you know so I think it's all good actually yeah you know I work with uh McPherson College once in a while and uh you know they turn off these qualified mechanic this is the only country in the world to be a mechanic you say I'm a mechanic and you're a mechanic right you know you go to Jeremy or something where's your certificate yeah let's see what you have here you know and when you graduate from Mcpherson you get a certificate in an automobile race it's a four-year program you learn right magnetos and hair body and you know you know original materials and all kinds of the trick so it's it's really exciting so it's and we live in an era now where nobody works their hands anymore so you wind up making really good money right like when I was a kid everybody pretended to know about cars because it's part of the culture right now you have kids that know nothing but the kids that know stuff really know stuff I mean I mean 18 19 year old guys is just unbelievable especially when it comes to the electronics and all that stuff right you know I like driving this thing exactly it's very good yeah it's a it's a fun little you know weekend car they can go toe-to-toe with a lot of cars from at the same time era um you know it plays there's there's lots of articles on them how these things could go to the drag strip and beat on the 5-0 Mustangs with no you know no problem whatsoever yeah that's a quarter mile when did Oldsmobile Falls even was 2004. 004 2005. so it's almost 20 years yep wow time time definitely flies but this was this was the last um W series performance card that Oldsmobile after this they ran the same package the w-41 forward s Achieva which was a pre you know the next car in line for the end body right and uh they produced about 1700 of those between 92-93 and then that was it w series was dead and gone so you're a Chevy mechanic by trade correct yep so what what uh Bond they use so to speak with Oldsmobile did your dad have one so well my so my dad my grandfather GM by family that's you know that's what I was growing up into um this particular car what it's not so much Oldsmobile because I'm a fan of Oldsmobile but I don't own really any other model Bolton wheel besides the Calais I got several of these um but what really drew me to this was that um when I was going through college learning learning the trade and whatnot um I don't know much about carburetors I can I can set a you know a bowl and whatnot and get it running but I don't I don't know how to take one apart put it back together right the fuel injected stuff is what I learned on and uh this being as primitive as it is was something I could relate to and I I knew how to work on so when I started I mean I was maybe 17 and 18 and you started digging for you know oh what's a cool car to have I had I had Honda crx's I've had Honda Prelude stuff like that but um you can go to the car show you know car shows up by us and there's a handful of those at each one this car here any car show I go to I have the only one and that's what I that's what I love about it that's funny yeah because I only get two reactions at car shows what is that or I haven't seen one in 25 years right right well you know I just finished a uh well a little while ago a Firebird Sprint the six cylinder yeah with the power out with the you know the four barrel the headers and I love that thing it's great I mean it's not the fastest right but it's just so but it's Unique in its own way even Pontiac guys go what's what's that what's that motor out of it it's Pontiac I'm gonna get that no no it's a really it says Pontiac look it's right on it you know you know it's just especially 70s everybody had V8 itis you know it's not a VA that was the thing with my with my Sprint Because by the time you got through with the high performance options you could have had a V8 with 400 horsepower you know yeah this thing 190 horsepower and a 2500 pound chassis what's this car weigh about about 2 500 pounds it's only 25 really yep I guess you don't have any safety equipment already yeah no there's no no airbags although Oldsmobile was the first car to have airbags yeah I remember yep remember an episode of 60 minutes where some lady got in an accident and the airbag went off and she she bought a used car and it was a a pilot car experimenting with airbags and it saved your life right and they did a whole thing about it on 60 Minutes nice find really any harshness there it seems all right yeah I mean it's to each their own I guess that that's what's notably killed this motor um GM in 1995 GM continued to produce this as a as a 2.4 liter but it had a balancing shaft assembly built into the oil pump right take a little bit of what people were complaining about out of the engine right but with that comes less horsepower they were they were about 150 to 160 horsepower fifth gear you're going about 60 miles an hour 2300 RPMs not bad yeah it gets I've done a couple we went to Watkins Glen track opening this year I took this car at the end of February and surprisingly I got almost 36 miles to the gallon on a trip there and back so wow yeah it was it was uh I was really surprised it drove there on a full tank I stopped and got fueled did my math beat the crap out of it on the racetrack for two laps and uh I got gases on the right home and it was I was really surprised and this is stock suspension Yep this is stock suspension it's it's not bad at all right not it's not bad for 76 000 miles it's uh it could be stiffer you know when it was new but yeah they can they can handle a corner surprisingly while you get on the on the Thruway on and off your GM put a lot of thought into they took a lot of information from the race teams on the tire size they were going to put on those things it's got a nice wide by two 1560s on it um so you got you've got a lot of contact surface to the road and what happened to this motor they just shelved it right it didn't continue on into the 2000s didn't know the the 2.4 liter variant of it um ran up until uh I believe 2002 would have been the last year you could get it um and I can't believe it was a Cavalier and then they faced out to the Ecotec engine yeah that's why they got my aerial out of them yep but this engine here was GM's first True full in-house dual overhead cam four-cylinder engine it likes to rev oh yeah I'm always down in here because I want to hear it left another thing that was kind of unique about these things is you have your traditional you know rack and pinion right mounted to the Cradle these are actually mounted up on the firewall and the tie rods actually connect just below the spring on the struts so the steering is is way higher up than most anything get any dark steel with it I mean the Italians always used to say you can't put more than 200 horsepower through the front wheels but also built in a 375 horse with the tornado right back in 91 GM was mostly front wheel wasn't it yeah they were just getting Cadillac from late late 80s they're just getting into you know phasing out rear wheel going in the front yeah pretty much every platform yeah uh obviously you know Chevy's Caprice ran into the mid 90s rear wheel drive um but other than that you know I think black side maybe the Allante that was still rear wheel drive yeah but most of their economy compact cars the end body the W body stuff like that was going front-wheel drive I'm like it would be an awful lot of fun oh yeah absolutely I I haven't had the opportunity to take my race car to a track day it's on my list of things to do but no doubt that thing can put down some solid laps anywhere You're Gonna Take It you know I like this thing if you know sometimes feeling fast is as fun as being fast right because it's not really fast by any modern definition I'm not bad but it's a pleasant exhaust note at least to me it is yeah the engine sounds like it's working you know it seemed it gives effort while seeing effortless so that makes any sense yep so I mean you put your phone your phone enjoy watching attack move across and your red line is almost seven Grand it's about 6800 I always want to be down one gear because it feels like when it's on the pot that's what it is yeah you put a turbo on this you could probably get 215 or something so funny the turbo GM had a Cutlass Supreme with a turbo model uh an experimental engine like this right with the 2.3 liter and it was uh the Indianapolis 500 pace car right I believe 1988. yeah um and that one the specs they gave out on that engine was 250 horsepower with single turbo on it oh okay so well GM was the first the turbocharger car yeah the jet fire right the jet fire and the Corvette they throw rock city but they both came about the same time I think the core of air was more popular yeah the jet fire what Turbo the Corvair didn't require any extra juice right the jet flyer needed right special fluid right yeah yeah I love that car too I'd never heard of that before I met him I know it's not funny and you're a GM guy yep I used to think the Corvair was the most European champion this is actually feels like you know a rabbit or one of those a little bit runs very nice kind of because it's advantages because this thing runs through isn't it oh yeah people don't know know your upkeep well Jeff thanks for bringing this piece of GM history here I'm always glad when I learned something I didn't know I think I knew this at one point but it just went out of my head as we've discussed the Aerotech I remember following that and then one day it just seemed to sort of disappear and I wonder what happened to it What was yeah it's an impressive car you know I really it's it's such this is the ultimate sleeper it just looks like not to be insulting a Rent-A-Car right you know you just let me pick up at the airport okay and I would love to pick this up at the airport I would have a great time in there they don't know what they had thank you my friend no problem appreciate it appreciate it it's my pleasure so stay tuned we'll have some more holes will be a lesson somewhere down the road somebody else will show up at something I never heard of and please do I can't wait thanks you guys see you later foreignyou know sometimes feeling fast is as fun as being fast right because it's not really fast by any monitories but it's a pleasant exhaust note at least I mean yeah the engine sounds like it's working it gives effort while seeing effortless so that makes any sense yep so I mean you put your foot in it and enjoy watching the pack go online welcome to the episode of Jay Leno's Garage the car featuring today 1991 Oldsmobile Calais okay okay but before you turn away let me finish very rare car very high performance car in fact most car guys don't even know about this a lot of GM guys never even knew about this program it's pretty fascinating this is the engine here you'll learn about this in a minute but did I get your attention looks pretty cool doesn't it this is a what they call a quad 442 w41 package they're only Built about 200 of these it's a fascinating story I didn't know anything about these cars until I ran to this gentleman Jeff safranic Jeff come on in my friend good to see you thanks for bringing us today oh no trouble at all you know I I always like to learn new stuff and as much you think you know there's always some stuff you don't know sure and I was certainly involved in all deals in the 90s and I probably heard about this but didn't really give it a to do so tell us what we have here so this engine here is basically a General Motors Experimental engine from mid 80s GM teamed up with two engineering firms fueling and Baton engineering this engine is from fueling engineering they basically were building whatever they could for General Motors Aerotech project right I remember that yep and uh so the two companies built several engines um I believe fueling engineering is the one that one one out this particular one was a two liter twin turbo made about 1170 horsepower and this is 1991. this is 1985. this was before the cars even thought on paper the 1987 GM took the they had a long tail and short tail version of the Aerotech took them with driver AJ foyt to a test track down Texas AJ foyt said a closed closed course land speed record about 268 miles per hour I don't know if this is the exact engine but an engine identical to this there's two on display at the reels Museum in Michigan and this is the only other one that I know of that's in private hands so it's a two valve it's four valve per cylinder oh it is four valve yes it's four valve per cylinder this is a two liter d-stroked version um twin turbo it just seems so unusable reveal I mean it doesn't seem like when you always think in Oldsmobile well you think of the big you know the big V8s and everything and it's such a unique package and it almost looks like something designed in the 30s by Leo Goosen and and oftenhauser and all those guys right it definitely has a Harry Miller the factory production engine definitely has a offie look to it yeah um but uh like again this one was completely experimental and they they just wanted to go out and show exactly what they could do with what they had at the time I love the fact that the alternator is driven by the water pump you've got water and electricity together right yes that's a great idea the English have tried that yeah it's fascinating uh yeah I mean it's really cool so what was the idea they had to homologate this what the engine was was too powerful they thought well that's not a production engine they tried to shut them down so so the Kelly was produced 1985 1991 right um about 1986 1987 you had uh two two brothers um Paul and Carl hacker throughout Albany New York the they were a big Volkswagen road course Racers General Motors approached them so hey you want to drive Oldsmobiles and they just went out with these you know basically in-house only Built engines that just dominated the 2-liter three liter classes at the time and as time went on scca stepped in and said you know this engine is not available the public you can't you can't do this anymore so in comes the w41 package for 1991 GM produces 200 examples 15 of which received the RPO code c41 they were designated non-air conditioning cars they also got an engine oil cooler set up they were supposed to be strictly for the race teams to build and race right just to meet sec's homologation Rule now did this not get a lot of publicity back in the day I mean there's a lot going on so surprisingly um they're the Calais that you could get a an S model an SL model and then you could get a w40 model which featured the high output version of this engine at 180 horsepower and then the very limited production of w41 engine which was 190 horsepower you got a special geared transmission with this as well as a little bit different different suspension on this car versus a w40 so this one got a little more Road coursing tweaks to it manual transmission man all 200 were manual transmission five speed five speed okay yeah because it it didn't seem like you know I think we still had V8 in our heads in the early 90s it was the idea why would you get a small engine when you can get a big engine for the same price I mean they tried that with Pontiac they did the overhead cam 6 for a while and they made a performance version by the time you paid for the performance version you could have had a V8 you know I mean people think well that'd make any sense right and and so the idea of an Oldsmobile with a two liter or four-cylinder engine then I'm like what I think to most people you think of the Oldsmobile as you know right right yeah they they advertise these as not not your father's Oldsmobile right and they were you know GM was trying to go for a younger generation at the time um for sales um but was it a tough selling the 200 from what information little information is out there yeah all 200 were produced in the month of March in 1991. this car was actually sold to its race team early 1992 so they sat on Lots I think not that because they were a tough sales because nobody knew about them right you'd go and you'd see the automatic model and it was two thousand dollars less because it wasn't a performance package you're probably buying that instead right okay I probably knew about at the time I'm sure this is on the cover think I saw this engine on the cover of Hot Rod Magazine I I have that in my mind this partic this particular engine the the r d and the Aerotech project that in my eyes got a lot more publicity right than the actual and then the actual what came of it yeah because it just seemed incongruous civils why is Oldsmobile playing with a four cylinder you know just seemed weird you know right but uh it's a great looking motor I have to admit just from the sculptured form of it it looks it looks performance I love this bag of snake's headers here I mean this is yeah the production engine once you get under the hood um looks a lot different than this but it shares the offie look right with the with the cam covers and whatnot so a gear driven chain driven belt driven one so this engine is belt driven okay the production engine is timing chain driven with hydraulic tension yeah because they good luck finding a belt for this oh yeah and and you're talking a thousand horsepower difference between the Rd engine and the thousand horsepower difference 1170 to 190 so that wasn't on the details are really really black and black out on a lot of the things for this particular project so this is the one we're going to drive today yep okay well I think this is just fascinating uh it just looks so unassuming sitting here do you surprise people at stop lights with this thing with the way cars are today it's it's uh you know back in the day you could go to the drag strip with one of these and probably take on a five liter Mustang no problem right um but today everybody hides everything we have everybody has a sleeper so it's uh it's definitely a looker um it's definitely not the fastest thing I've ever driven but definitely goods and goes okay can we open the hood and see what the production engine looks like to from inside yep oh so it's transverse of course it's from wheel drive correct front-wheel drive yeah correct I remember the first time my my dad and I looked at cars my dad said that salesman why is the engine transverse okay we get more power more power transverse he goes well how does that work yeah this guy's salesman just lighting what he's talking about but you do lose a certain you do lose a certain amount right today by today's standards it's about if it were an automatic you lose about 25 so the Driveline manual 17 right yeah yeah yeah it was in line of course and it had to be further back correct and you'd have a lot trunks less trunk space and all that kind of stuff yeah yeah okay fascinating and about 190 horse which is pretty good for a 1990. for 91 it was one of one of the top performers GM head out um for 91 mile a year it it surprised a lot of people when they put it out you know what there's a lot of magazine articles out there um that that just show how ridiculous this thing was at the time yeah because uh I remember were you mentioned the comparison to the fox bodied Mustang we have one of the highway patrol cars here and it was a V8 with a little two barrel and it was you know you thought you used to have the you know the Mustang that chases Porsches or something right they were in the ad for and you go right well I don't know what you're chasing maybe a 1948 gramon car with 35 horsepower yeah you're not going to catch anybody missing so this really would have been uh certainly the equal of anything was available right once you once you got into the 80s and and the big three started to get choked out by emissions all right you know four-cylinder was the way to go you could do a lot more with a lot less yeah this is a proof of it okay what else is here that's different no well nothing it's pretty standard I mean they they covered the I miss seeing that I like seeing the twin uh twin yep between the cam covers they were it's a idi cover it's totally integrated um two coil packs with uh plug boots um so there's no plug wires there's obviously no distributor no cap or anything like that to go bad I kind of expected a bar bracing across the front here but now going from chalk Tower to shock Tower but I guess they didn't these things were yeah these things were pretty rigid a lot of the a lot of the race teams did did brace a lot there's a lot different bracing in the race cars obviously because I think in 90 or 91 certainly the late 80s the mid-range Oldsmobile was the best selling car in America right it was big had four doors had a V8 and it was the most popular car you could get nobody predicted it would be out of business within 20 years decade or so a little bit yeah I mean it just goes to show you you never know yep all right well very cool very nice all right well yeah let's put this down again foreign can we open the hood on the racing version absolutely you know this looks pretty production to me it doesn't look that all different under the hood is it mostly internal is that right so basic differences um between the street version versus what GM produced for the race teams to build these as you can see has a lack of air conditioning components right they added in a oil cooler system for the engine and it's rumored that they got baffled gas tanks but not confirmed and they are noticeably a little lighter because they didn't get any sound deadening material in the floor versus A Streetcar that has it right all of them had ABS but these had tunable ABS computers for different tracks they could set you know front more brake rear more brake they were doing it electronically instead of with a bias adjuster and those computers like the size of a suitcase back in the day so the ABS computer is here um they could they could tune that through the OBD2 port right um and then the ECM for the engine is up under the dashboard on the passenger side and they actually had data logging technology for these things floppy floppy disk drives right where they could go and test run these things go back to what of a computer they had at the time and look at that and change fuel Maps yeah because OBD didn't become mandatory until 96 right so your OBD1 is in GM vehicles as early as 1984 I believe that would be obd0 this car is what they consider OBD1 which is about 1988 to 1995 1996 would be OBD2 which is what they're currently phasing out now yeah but 96 is the first year mandatory every car had to do it correct you had to plug in okay very cool now what are these parts you got over here so these engines may look the same on the outside but internally they're completely different animals this one in particular is near about 240 horsepower um reason for that um it's got a Kellogg Forge lightweight crankshaft in it as well as some jet titanium rods they're about 100 grams less than a factory Rod we free up that rotating mask I mean that factory rod looks like something from the 1940s it just right technology hasn't changed too much don't reinvent the wheel but the jet Rod is obviously much lighter much stronger and then as I said they had data logging capabilities that's basically what the engine computer was this was this particular one was from gmr D that they would they would trade files because it's just a removable eprom chip in there right on back and forth to try and improve on it a crank like that to make today would cost you what 15 grand 20. oh for I I would assume in the neighborhood of that yeah for sure I'm sure they weren't much cheaper back then either yeah yeah because it's all just machine work isn't it you just no counterweights on it right nope um so that that is the basic difference on a factory crank the timing trigger wheel here is actually a full cast counterweight and what are those all Factory books so these are actually the two original log books for this car um okay this car was raced from about the middle of 1992 on the previous owner that I purchased it from was racing it up until 2009. just the idea that they're using books as opposed to putting in a computer you know something you'd have I mean just it seems like they see that and gear approved look at that yep that's about all those books are for for safety occasionally they'll they'll drill a small hole in the cage to make sure the pipe thickness is correct um you know make sure you're not unsafely racing right right I think you can see it's all all stamped different races oh that's kind of that's a cool Pizza of uh thank you kit to go with it there very nice well let's uh can we take this one for a ride absolutely let's see what if I can we'll shut this thing down here here we go foreign this was not street legal but this one is come on let's take it for a ride sure oh Crush velor I remember the 90s smooth surprisingly they were notorious for how harsh the engine ran well the best thing to do with the whole car is drive it you know right sitting is the worst thing oh I know it goes pretty good yeah yeah it's got some it's got some pickup so pep as my dad would say try the racers like these things the power band was like 2 800 up the red line and it's fun because it's not crazy horsepower it doesn't overpower the car right it doesn't overpower the chassis discs in front drums and back is that what it is yep so the race version didn't have four wheel discs so the race version has um the standard setup in the front right it's got oversized aluminum drums oh yeah well they were famous for Buick and Oldsmobile had those great aluminum brake drums I remember this was 91 was the first year GM started to implement their abs on these things and uh that they just did they did so much tuning with the race car with the race teams um to get them to handle you know this is always the era that weird fabric stuff you know right everything is everything's not quite plastic but not quite leather yeah yeah it's that like pleather you know yeah it's like yeah nice yep it's close close ratio uh 394 final drive the race car is a little more difficult to drive it's got a torsion limited slip differential in it yeah um so that grips a lot harder it's actually pretty difficult to turn and I'm I really question how those guys got them around road courses back in the day but I remember before then the early Shelby's had the Detroit Locker rear end right you go you go around a corner strip the tire it's like you're breaking a guy's neck crack what was uh I I broke a tooth I you know no I guess oh I guess not you know but just all the time right but they were pretty bulletproof weren't they they didn't break no you know it's a shame they didn't make like a Fastback Coop or some kind of special because this could have challenged a lot of the Imports of it right so they there there was a two-door four-door bottle available you could get this in the four-door um the concepts of these in like 1984 1985 they had a two-door um wagon-back kind of like a Civic hatchback style thing right um obviously I've never never met fruition it's but that's how they advertise these things because they were putting out better horsepower than the other Hondas or Toyotas they had at the time um you know the the race teams a couple the couple of the points sheets that I have from the end of the year where these things were winning the Championships first second and third were these things and then the closest thing they can touch them were turbo mr2s yeah but once you lose your reputation it takes a long time you know right I mean they glided for so many years the reputation remember the Japanese started beating him and was like oh yeah what are we gonna do yeah and now like that you know and a lot of that still lingers you have a whole generation because I'm not buying an American car right but you know to me I think it's equal to anything that's out there I mean I think General Motors is all Engineers now oh yeah that's what I love about it I mean there's nobody else in the world can build the Corvette for 65 thousand dollars and do it in a union shop right using quality product because you know when I think came out I thought oh it's going to have some to our converter transmission it'll steel frame with some carbon pieces hanging on no no they it's all magnesium and the double clutch transmission yeah this the c8's definitely definitely a beautiful car yeah I drove the Z06 and that was really impressive you know the electric Corvette coming too that's oh yeah there's an electric everything coming I know I know that's the scary part it's like unfortunately for me like I'm a mechanic by trade so I'm gonna have to learn it and work on it before I can read it but you'll have work for the rest of your life oh yeah as long as long as the government doesn't crack down on you know ridiculously on the ice engines it's I'll be fine but well I don't think any you know I think it actually saves I think because you can't can build you can't continue to have one of their 15 billion cars on the some crazy thing yeah how are you gonna you can't get rid of them all at once that's right but the idea of being I I think it's like the horse horse is now for recreation right and they're well taken care of right I mean you use your electric car during the week to go to work and then you take your old car for the weekend yeah you're a Ferrari or or this or anything out on the weekend you zip around the hills I'm sure that's a good way to look at it yeah and and then guys like yourself become Specialists you're not just a mechanic now you're a specialist and right people come to you because they have one of these you know so I think it's all good actually yeah you know I work with uh McPherson College once in a while and uh you know they turn off these qualified mechanic this is the only country in the world to be a mechanic you say I'm a mechanic and you're a mechanic right you know you go to Jeremy or something where's your certificate yeah let's see what you have here you know and when you graduate from Mcpherson you get a certificate in an automobile race it's a four-year program you learn right magnetos and hair body and you know you know original materials and all kinds of the trick so it's it's really exciting so it's and we live in an era now where nobody works their hands anymore so you wind up making really good money right like when I was a kid everybody pretended to know about cars because it's part of the culture right now you have kids that know nothing but the kids that know stuff really know stuff I mean I mean 18 19 year old guys is just unbelievable especially when it comes to the electronics and all that stuff right you know I like driving this thing exactly it's very good yeah it's a it's a fun little you know weekend car they can go toe-to-toe with a lot of cars from at the same time era um you know it plays there's there's lots of articles on them how these things could go to the drag strip and beat on the 5-0 Mustangs with no you know no problem whatsoever yeah that's a quarter mile when did Oldsmobile Falls even was 2004. 004 2005. so it's almost 20 years yep wow time time definitely flies but this was this was the last um W series performance card that Oldsmobile after this they ran the same package the w-41 forward s Achieva which was a pre you know the next car in line for the end body right and uh they produced about 1700 of those between 92-93 and then that was it w series was dead and gone so you're a Chevy mechanic by trade correct yep so what what uh Bond they use so to speak with Oldsmobile did your dad have one so well my so my dad my grandfather GM by family that's you know that's what I was growing up into um this particular car what it's not so much Oldsmobile because I'm a fan of Oldsmobile but I don't own really any other model Bolton wheel besides the Calais I got several of these um but what really drew me to this was that um when I was going through college learning learning the trade and whatnot um I don't know much about carburetors I can I can set a you know a bowl and whatnot and get it running but I don't I don't know how to take one apart put it back together right the fuel injected stuff is what I learned on and uh this being as primitive as it is was something I could relate to and I I knew how to work on so when I started I mean I was maybe 17 and 18 and you started digging for you know oh what's a cool car to have I had I had Honda crx's I've had Honda Prelude stuff like that but um you can go to the car show you know car shows up by us and there's a handful of those at each one this car here any car show I go to I have the only one and that's what I that's what I love about it that's funny yeah because I only get two reactions at car shows what is that or I haven't seen one in 25 years right right well you know I just finished a uh well a little while ago a Firebird Sprint the six cylinder yeah with the power out with the you know the four barrel the headers and I love that thing it's great I mean it's not the fastest right but it's just so but it's Unique in its own way even Pontiac guys go what's what's that what's that motor out of it it's Pontiac I'm gonna get that no no it's a really it says Pontiac look it's right on it you know you know it's just especially 70s everybody had V8 itis you know it's not a VA that was the thing with my with my Sprint Because by the time you got through with the high performance options you could have had a V8 with 400 horsepower you know yeah this thing 190 horsepower and a 2500 pound chassis what's this car weigh about about 2 500 pounds it's only 25 really yep I guess you don't have any safety equipment already yeah no there's no no airbags although Oldsmobile was the first car to have airbags yeah I remember yep remember an episode of 60 minutes where some lady got in an accident and the airbag went off and she she bought a used car and it was a a pilot car experimenting with airbags and it saved your life right and they did a whole thing about it on 60 Minutes nice find really any harshness there it seems all right yeah I mean it's to each their own I guess that that's what's notably killed this motor um GM in 1995 GM continued to produce this as a as a 2.4 liter but it had a balancing shaft assembly built into the oil pump right take a little bit of what people were complaining about out of the engine right but with that comes less horsepower they were they were about 150 to 160 horsepower fifth gear you're going about 60 miles an hour 2300 RPMs not bad yeah it gets I've done a couple we went to Watkins Glen track opening this year I took this car at the end of February and surprisingly I got almost 36 miles to the gallon on a trip there and back so wow yeah it was it was uh I was really surprised it drove there on a full tank I stopped and got fueled did my math beat the crap out of it on the racetrack for two laps and uh I got gases on the right home and it was I was really surprised and this is stock suspension Yep this is stock suspension it's it's not bad at all right not it's not bad for 76 000 miles it's uh it could be stiffer you know when it was new but yeah they can they can handle a corner surprisingly while you get on the on the Thruway on and off your GM put a lot of thought into they took a lot of information from the race teams on the tire size they were going to put on those things it's got a nice wide by two 1560s on it um so you got you've got a lot of contact surface to the road and what happened to this motor they just shelved it right it didn't continue on into the 2000s didn't know the the 2.4 liter variant of it um ran up until uh I believe 2002 would have been the last year you could get it um and I can't believe it was a Cavalier and then they faced out to the Ecotec engine yeah that's why they got my aerial out of them yep but this engine here was GM's first True full in-house dual overhead cam four-cylinder engine it likes to rev oh yeah I'm always down in here because I want to hear it left another thing that was kind of unique about these things is you have your traditional you know rack and pinion right mounted to the Cradle these are actually mounted up on the firewall and the tie rods actually connect just below the spring on the struts so the steering is is way higher up than most anything get any dark steel with it I mean the Italians always used to say you can't put more than 200 horsepower through the front wheels but also built in a 375 horse with the tornado right back in 91 GM was mostly front wheel wasn't it yeah they were just getting Cadillac from late late 80s they're just getting into you know phasing out rear wheel going in the front yeah pretty much every platform yeah uh obviously you know Chevy's Caprice ran into the mid 90s rear wheel drive um but other than that you know I think black side maybe the Allante that was still rear wheel drive yeah but most of their economy compact cars the end body the W body stuff like that was going front-wheel drive I'm like it would be an awful lot of fun oh yeah absolutely I I haven't had the opportunity to take my race car to a track day it's on my list of things to do but no doubt that thing can put down some solid laps anywhere You're Gonna Take It you know I like this thing if you know sometimes feeling fast is as fun as being fast right because it's not really fast by any modern definition I'm not bad but it's a pleasant exhaust note at least to me it is yeah the engine sounds like it's working you know it seemed it gives effort while seeing effortless so that makes any sense yep so I mean you put your phone your phone enjoy watching attack move across and your red line is almost seven Grand it's about 6800 I always want to be down one gear because it feels like when it's on the pot that's what it is yeah you put a turbo on this you could probably get 215 or something so funny the turbo GM had a Cutlass Supreme with a turbo model uh an experimental engine like this right with the 2.3 liter and it was uh the Indianapolis 500 pace car right I believe 1988. yeah um and that one the specs they gave out on that engine was 250 horsepower with single turbo on it oh okay so well GM was the first the turbocharger car yeah the jet fire right the jet fire and the Corvette they throw rock city but they both came about the same time I think the core of air was more popular yeah the jet fire what Turbo the Corvair didn't require any extra juice right the jet flyer needed right special fluid right yeah yeah I love that car too I'd never heard of that before I met him I know it's not funny and you're a GM guy yep I used to think the Corvair was the most European champion this is actually feels like you know a rabbit or one of those a little bit runs very nice kind of because it's advantages because this thing runs through isn't it oh yeah people don't know know your upkeep well Jeff thanks for bringing this piece of GM history here I'm always glad when I learned something I didn't know I think I knew this at one point but it just went out of my head as we've discussed the Aerotech I remember following that and then one day it just seemed to sort of disappear and I wonder what happened to it What was yeah it's an impressive car you know I really it's it's such this is the ultimate sleeper it just looks like not to be insulting a Rent-A-Car right you know you just let me pick up at the airport okay and I would love to pick this up at the airport I would have a great time in there they don't know what they had thank you my friend no problem appreciate it appreciate it it's my pleasure so stay tuned we'll have some more holes will be a lesson somewhere down the road somebody else will show up at something I never heard of and please do I can't wait thanks you guys see you later foreign\n"