Everything To Know About Chevrolet's Legendary 396 V8 Engine
"I've got a '69 Chevy with a 396, Fuelie heads and a Hurst on the floor" are the opening lines to Bruce Springsteen's classic song "Racing in the Street" from the 1978 "Darkness on the Edge of Town" album. For most listeners, this is a lot of words that mean very little, and they enjoy the song not needing to dig into the specifics of Springsteen's lyrical car. Well, we are here to spotlight the first element of what was in the 1969 Chevrolet: the 396 V8 engine.
The big block engines have been a staple of Chevrolet's line since 1958 with the introduction of a 348 V8, and these were expanded over the next several years until Chevy got to a 427 V8. When Chevy entered its fourth generation of big block engines in the mid 1960s, they modified the mechanics of the engines, nicknaming them the rat motors, in opposition to the small block "mouse motors." This is where the 396 comes into play, which aimed to take the power of that original 427 and put it into a somewhat smaller package. Although the 396 technically lasted only 5 years and was replaced by a 402, the engine was so popular that they kept calling it the 396.
[Featured image by sv1ambo via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY 2.0]
The impressive power of the 396
The first two models that the 396 V8 was put into was the 1965 Chevrolet Corvette and the Z16 Chevelle, and in the following years, the engine would find its way into the Camaro, the Nova, the Monte Carlo, and more. Putting an engine like this into these small and muscle cars gave these vehicles quite the kick. According to Muscle Car Club, those two original vehicles were given different iterations of the 396, with the Corvette receiving the original L78 model and the Chevelle the L37. The L37 managed to reach up to 350 hp, which is nothing to sneeze at, but the L78 topped out at 425 V8. Chevy made five other models of the 396, but none matched that L78 in power.
Once the company got to 1970, a decision was made to take the 396 and bore it to a 402 V8. This dramatically reduced the amount of horsepower the V8 could produce, topping out at 350 hp with its strongest model. The 402s only lasted until 1973. That also happened to be the same year as the oil crisis and a few years after the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, in which pollution and emissions are major issue. Chevy big block engines weren't over, but the era of the 396 V8 was the last one before the company had to completely rethink what these engines were. An impressive way to go out.
[Featured image by sv1ambo via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY 2.0]