It Sounds Like the Cadillac LMDh Car Won't Use the Corvette C8.R's LT6.R

Cadillac isn't releasing many technical details yet on its new LMDh car, dubbed the Project GTP Hypercar at this stage, though it did confirm it will be powered by a 5.5-liter DOHC V-8. Naturally, you'd assume that this is the Corvette C8.R's V-8, the 5.5-liter LT6.R. Not quite! It sounds like Cadillac won't be using the engine.

In an interview before the reveal of the car, Laura Klauser, GM's head of sports-car racing, simply told Road & Track that this is a "brand-new" engine being developed in house. At the online press conference announcing the car to automotive and motorsports media, Klauser expanded on this a little bit, seeming to imply that Cadillac's will be a different V-8. "One of the things we're most excited about is to hear the thunder of a Cadillac V-8 that will be in this car," she said, "a 5.5-liter joining our other V-8 that we bring over to Le Mans."

Now, it's possible that Cadillac is stretching the truth a bit, like Maserati did with its "all-new" V6 that sure shares a lot of parts with Ferrari's V8, as we noted. Still, Cadillac is implying it won't borrow its engine from the Corvette. Perhaps some learnings will be shared by the teams developing the engines, and it's easy to imagine at least a few parts being common between the two. A teaser animation released by Cadillac features the sounds of a cross-plane crankshaft V-8, not dissimilar to the Small Block-based V-8 used in Cadillac's current DPi race car. Perhaps the sound here isn't reflective of the final product, but it's worth pointing out as the Corvette C8.R uses a flat-plane V-8, and LMDh competitor BMW is confirmed to be using a twin-turbo flat-plane V-8. Porsche also confirmed its LMDh car will use a twin-turbo V-8, and by the sounds of things, it has a flat-plane crank, too. Cadillac made no mention of the aspiration of its V-8.