Chevrolet 5.7-litre V8 coming to Supercars

The Aussie category is set to ditch its current bespoke five-litre V8s as part of its new rules in favour of more affordable and durable crate-style motors from Ford and Chevrolet.

While Ford was quick to nominate the motor for its Gen3 Mustang, a 5.4-litre version of the 5.2-litre Aluminator, its taken longer for GM to land on its preferred engine architecture for the Camaro.

It's now been confirmed that the displacement of the Chevrolet unit will be 5.7 litres, however details beyond that are yet to be locked in by GM engine homologator KRE.

That includes what series the engine will be based on, Supercars' Head of Motorsport Adrian Burgess explaining that it may not be as simple as naming it an LS or LT motor.

"[KRE] are a long way advanced with it, but it’s not a straight off-the-shelf road car engine anymore," said Burgess.

"Our engines never have been. Like all these things, they’re an accumulation of the parts.

"Now they’re working with GM closely on what they believe is the best package for them to put forward that meets the financial criteria we’re putting in place – we're putting a target number for them to hopefully reach, we’re putting a target [for] reliability and rebuild costs.

"So to reach all of those sort of metrics that we’re trying to hold them to, it’s complicated. It’s not as easy as saying it’s an LS3 block or LS3 heads or they’re bespoke heads or it’s an LTR block. It’s not that straightforward. Whilst from the outside people might think it’s that straightforward but it isn’t.

"There’s a lot of factors in this thing and Supercars aren’t in a position to tell you what it is until those guys are happy with what they are presenting, and they are still working through that."

Supercars has previously said it is confident it can paritise the two engines despite the differences in capacity and the fact the Ford is overhead cam and the Chevrolet a pushrod motor.

Ilmor Engineering in the US is on standby to help with that parity process should Supercars need it later in the development process.