Anniversary 427 Big-Block Engine - Big-Block Birthday

How Bob Cross Saved The ZL1 Block
When you're scrounging through the swap meet section of your local car show, sometimes it can be tough to tell what you are looking at. Of course, if you ran across an aluminum block with a snowflake on the front of it, you might know what you were looking at. But imagine how tough it would be to tell what the tooling for that block looked like. Then, place that block tooling in a GM scrap yard about the size of an airport hanger. That was the scene some five or six years ago when Bob Cross, a lifetime GM employee and current GM Racing engineer, went looking for the original ZL1 block tooling. He somehow located it, convinced GM Performance Parts to put the substantial investment into restoring that tooling, and now we've got brand-new ZL1 blocks.

Modern History Of The ZL1
The first application of the renewed ZL1 tooling was a reproduction ZL1 block. That block is still available in the GMPP catalog as PN 12370850. In addition to the bare block, GMPP released a short run of crate engines in 2002. Sold as the ZL1 Ram Jet, GM Performance Parts released only 200 of these very special crate engines. They offered all of the ZL1 bottom-end goodies with the very adaptable Ram Jet intake with fuel injection and custom calibration. Hot rodders loved the ZL1 Ram Jet, but purists wondered why this ZL1 was a 454 and not the 427 that they had dreamed of as kids. With the release of the latest ZL1-influenced crate engine, we think hot rodders and musclecar purists will come together in celebration of one very special birthday.

+Project X Gets The First ZL1
How did Popular Hot Rodding get an exclusive first look at GM Performance Parts' latest greatest crate engine? Imagine you had the choice of what engine would be the last engine ever placed in the most famous magazine project car ever built? What would your choice be? Certainly, it would come from GM. It would be something very special. And, it would be one of a kind. That's what we were thinking. So when GM offered to re-engineer Project X as a way to help launch its new ZL1 masterpiece, we jumped at the chance. As you'll see, the engine is just part of the entire package, but it certainly is the centerpiece of what we think will become the most modern hot rod ever built. Stay tuned to PHR to see how GM has rewritten the book on building hot rods.