Engine Of The Day: The Very First Chevrolet V8

We haven't had an Engine Of The Day for a while, but the Chevrolet Series D V8 engine deserves some attention. 288 cubic inches, overhead valves, crossflow heads… and it was manufactured 38 years before the small-block Chevrolet engine. That's right, Chevrolet had an OHV V8, generating an excellent-for-its-time 55 horsepower, back in 1917! Chevrolet was absorbed by General Motors that year, and the Series D was dropped when The General's marketers decided to make Chevrolet its low-priced marque… but imagine what might have been, had early hot-rodders become accustomed to cheap V8s in the decades before the Ford Flathead V8.