‘This Hellephant is a beast:’ FCA unveils 1,000-horsepower 426 Hemi engine at SEMA 2018. World so not shocked. World thinks it’s awesome anyway. World right.

Photo by Bill Hayward.

You’ve got to give FCA credit: they sure know how to put on one Hellephant of a show at a tradeshow.

A ginormous crowd was gathered at the FCA booth on the lower level South Hall at the Las Vegas convention center, well ahead of the traditional 4:26 p.m. start time, commemorating the 426-cubic-inch displacement of the original Mopar hemi engine.

Chevrolet set to show off new crate engines in delicious vintage Chevy builds at SEMA 2018

Photo: Chevrolet Pressroom.

If the term “crate engine” makes you think only of the “Put a 350 in it, man!” crowd, it might be time for you to take a fresh look.

While it may be true that, as Matt Farah observed during a chat with Jalopnik’s Kurt Bradley on The Smoking Tire podcast this week, a lot more people are talking on the Interwebs about doing crazy LS swaps these days than actually doing them, the Chevrolet crate engine lineup offers a considerable depth and breadth of swap-friendly options, with nearly 50 motors to choose from.

"A 350 is a 350 is a 350"—NOT! And Other Misconceptions About GM V8 Engines Debunked

With the Crate Engine, the Chevy 350 lives today.
Photo: GM media website.

With GM's rightful reputation for badge engineering—slapping the brands of their different divisions on essentially lookalike bodies—it isn't at all unreasonable that many people think that the same idea applied to powertrains in the glory days of the storied GM V8 engines like the Chevrolet 350.

Plus, there is the ubiquitous cliche uttered by many gearheads—or wannabe gearheads—when talking about the hot-rodder projects they dream of: "put a 350 in it."

It's easy to have the misconception that, if you look at a Chevrolet, a Buick, and a Pontiac from the 70s, each with a 350 ci V8, you're looking at the same engine three times.

But there's a problem: it isn't true.

Here's a quick history lesson—if you want more detail, you'll find copious amounts of research fodder on the Interwebs. In a nutshell, over the decades, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Chevrolet, and Buick each had separate and very innovative powertrain engineering and manufacturing operations. And each, at some point, arrived at the magic number of 350 cubic inches of displacement that, for its time, packed a lot of horsepower and torque into a reasonably compact footprint.