Outfitted with a supercharged 6.2-liter LT4 V8 with 668 hp and 659 lb-ft of torque, the 2022 Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing is among the most powerful sedans on the planet. As it turns out, the automaker gave some thought to the idea of making it even more powerful.
General Motors has a plethora of potent engines it could have selected to power the CT5-V Blackwing, including the supercharged 6.2-liter LT5 V8 found in the C7-generation Chevrolet Corvette ZR1. Cadillac thought about using this engine but quickly ran into some issues it couldn’t overcome, V-Series Blackwing chief engineer Mirza Grebovic recently told Cadillac Society.
“When we initially started working on this project, obviously we were super excited to shove any engine in there and make as much power as possible,” he said. “But in the end what we have to balance is a driver’s car.”
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One of the major issues that Cadillac encountered with the LT5 was visibility – or rather lack thereof.
“So, if you put the LT5 in the CT5, we ran into simple issues – you can’t see out of the car,” Grebovic explained. “In the ZR1, you can notice that it’s a dry sump system and it uses that shaker hood. We couldn’t put a shaker hood on the CT5. You would have to make it so high that you can’t see outside the car, and we wouldn’t have met regulatory requirements for vision.”
Grebovic also stated that if an LT5-powered CT5-V Blackwing model produced the same 760 hp as the C7 Corvette ZR1, there simply would have been no way to put the power to the ground efficiently through the standard 305-section rear tires.
“It would have been a powerful car, but it probably wouldn’t be any faster at the track or the quarter mile, because 305 [rear] tires with that much power would be very tough to manage.”
