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

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.

But they all got to that 350 number in different ways, through different bore and stroke combinations—bore being the width of the cylinder, and stroke being the height of the cylinder through which each piston travels in its explosive internal-combustion journey.

All that said, in the end, only the Chevrolet 350 survived long enough to make it into the 90s, when the small-block Chevy was used in a number of GM models like the Chevrolet Caprice and the Buick Roadmaster. The other GM divisions eventually stopped making their own versions of the 350 V8.

There are some other common misconceptions about the fabled Chevrolet 350 that need to be debunked as well:

1. While 5.7 liters is indeed roughly equivalent to 350 cubic inches, the 5.7 V8s available in GM products today, like the Corvette, some Cadillacs, and Chevy trucks, is NOT based on the classic small-block Chevrolet V8 platform. Today’s LS series was engineered from the ground up and is now earning its own much-deserved reputation as a classic.
2. No, the 5.7 V8 motors that you see in some other marques, like Toyota Tundra pickups, are not Chevy 350s. They are completely different motors with different architectures.