Is the Cadillac Eldorado 500 cu in engine the largest engine ever factory produced in a car anyone could buy?
Probably depends how far you go back....in the olden days, some of the luxury cars had huge engines. Not huge HP, though.
Biggest engine closest to '65 would have been the MEL 430, 462 also but not sure of time frame, maybe '66-'67.
The legendary 28.5L Fiat, with over 7.1L per cylinder. The "Beast of Turin" isn't just the largest 4 cylinder engine, it's the biggest engine ever fitted to a production car. Somewhere around 1800 cubic inches. But not everyone could buy one.
Production cars, Pierce Arrow 66 825 cu in, 1911 Oldsmobile Limited 707 cu in, Renault 40cv with 9 liter 554 cu in engine, McFarlan 573 cu in, Locomobile Model 48 525 cu in. These were all six cylinder luxury cars of the teens and early twenties of the last century. Seagrave made fire engines, the Beast of Turin was a racing car with an aircraft engine never a production car sold to the public. If you want to count racing cars there were land speed record cars with multiple, very large aircraft engines.
Among modern cars it would be the Viper which was a production car you could buy. Among regular sedan type cars it would be the Cadillac 500 cu in used in 75 76 Sedan de Ville and Eldorado from 1970 to 76. Last year rated at 190HP. Hard to believe such a big engine produced so little power.
i had a 900 sumthin inch v8 Climax well pump motor at my dump in AZ for yard art, but some asshole stole it. i thought it was safe because my 863 bobcat could only lift one end, and it took a winch on my rolldeck to get it there. but.. when scrap was high, it disappeared.
for entertainment, i'll add to the story of the climax. in the 80's, i bought 12 lots in bowie az, half a block, for 3 grand. remember two things, you get what you pay for, and as realtor would say "location...location..location. Bowie was 10,000 people in the 60's, irrigated cotton farms was the money. then, we started buying cotton from India, so the town died. 600 population when i was there. many folks were retired railroad workers, and then...there was 3/4 of the town that lived in a single wide trailer with tires on the roof to hold down the tin, and yet they had 3 or 4 75.000 dollar cars in the driveway. one night the cops, all of them, DEA, Boarder patrol, county sheriffs, everybody, arrested over 200, so, over one third of the town for various smuggling crimes. about 80 miles from the boarder. there is a mountain range to the boarder, so the local folks were either running they're 4 wheelers thru the the mountains hauling dope, or the had safe houses set up to house Illegals to be picked up and hauled to somewhere up north. my neighbor had a trailer that was like a job site office trailer, but had two big garbage dumpsters out side because there was usually about 10 to 15 people waiting to be picked up. one day my bobcat had a low tire. so low, i was afraid to move it fearing it would fall off the bead. i went to the neighbor to see if he had air. while i was there waiting for the compressor to build up, the "boss" came by and handed my neighbor a wad of cash rolled up the size of a d cell battery. thats life on the boarder. now, my motor , i thought was so cool that i put it down near the road so everyone could enjoy the engineering marvel that it was. instead, the locals thought it was a fun target to smash beer bottles on. so, for a couple years every winter when i went to my future retirement home, all i found was smashed glass. now... the motor is gone, and so is the property
Yep! I had a '74 Sedan DeVille with the 500... Or was it a 502 ci motor....????.. That thing was a gas hog....
First model with overhead valves, 452 cu in. Last model with wide angle V and side valves, 431 cu in. and 185 hp. Yes, a 1930s engine of smaller displacement and practically the same HP as the 1976 Cadillac 500 cu in V8. Marmon made a V16 of 491 cu in and 200HP from 1931 to 1933.
Some one from the SF bay area had a summer cabin in my county near lake Tahoe a few years back.They came up to check on it......and it was gone.The whole thing! Thieves can be hard workers too.