LS Everything

An in-depth Look at the Ls Engine Series Offerings Over the Years

- Steven Rupp

Back in the early 1990s the Gen II LT1 and LT4 engines powered GM’s hottest performance cars, but GM read the tea leaves and knew that this platform would not be able to get them where they would eventually need to be in terms of emissions, CAFE standards, or even performance. A new V-8 was needed and in 1993 work began on what would eventually be labeled the LS1. Replicating the success of the original small-block was a huge undertaking, GM kept the basic structure of a single cam pushrod V-8, but nearly everything else was reworked from the deep skirt block to the firing order. A coil-near-plug arrangement replaced the trouble prone Opti-Spark and to save weight the blocks would be cast aluminum with iron sleeves. The new LS1 displaced 5.7 liters, which pencils out to 346 cubic inches, very close to the 350-inch engines they were slate