GM's Northstar V8 Going Out of Production in July
June 9, 2010
It used to be the brightest point in General Motors Co.'s powertrain firmament, but now the company's once-famous Northstar V8 is ending production after a 17-year run, a GM spokesman confirmed to Inside Line. The last Northstar will be made sometime near the end of July.
The 4.6-liter Northstar was huge news when GM launched the overhead-cam, all-aluminum V8 in 1992 for the '93 Cadillac Allante. It was the company's first overhead-cam V8 and brought to market a number of then-innovative features, including 100,000-mile sparkplugs and a "limp home" mode designed to keep the engine from melting itself even if all the coolant was lost.
For a decade, Cadillac and the Northstar were inextricably linked, as GM kept the "Northstar System" a Cadillac exclusive. In later years, however, the Northstar - if not in name, the engine architecture itself - was pressed into service for other brands, mostly Oldsmobile and Buick. There have been three different Northstar displacements over the years, although the 4.6-liter by far was the most widely used. A short-lived 3.5-liter V6 was derived from the Northstar for Oldsmobile before the brand was discontinued.
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