Only One Gas Engine Made the Wards 10 Best Powertrains List: A V8

We’ve reached a point where electrification is actually everywhere in automotive. People talked about it for a long time, insisting that our commuters and our go-fast performance cars alike would be battery-assisted if not fully battery-powered, and by golly, they were right. At least, they were mostly right, as nine out of 10 powertrains on Wards Auto’s Best Engines and Propulsion Systems list are electrified in some way. The Chevy Corvette ZR1‘s LT7 V8 is the lone pure internal-combustion engine that made the cut, and y’know, that makes sense.

Wards has been publishing this list for 31 years now, but you don’t need me to tell you how much the car industry has changed in that amount of time. Up until 2020, Wards simply called it the “10 Best Engines” list, though it adapted the title at the turn of the decade to better reflect the powertrains it was awarding.

Before I go on jabbering any longer, here’s the full rundown of winners:

• BMW M5 – 4.4L Turbocharged V8 PHEV
• Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 – 5.5L twin-turbo V8
• Dodge Charger Daytona – Electric Propulsion System
• Ford F-150 – 3.5L Turbocharged V6 HEV (2024 returning winner)
• Honda Civic Hybrid –2.0L I4 HEV (2024 returning winner)
• Hyundai Ioniq 9 – Electric Propulsion System
• Lexus LX – 700h 3.4L Turbocharged V6 HEV
• Lucid Gravity – Electric Propulsion System
• Mercedes-AMG E53 – 3.0L Turbocharged I6 PHEV
• Nissan Leaf – Electric Propulsion System

So, clearly, there are some hybrids in there with stout gas engines doing most of the work. Two of them are reigning champs: the Honda Civic Hybrid and Ford F-150 Powerboost. The former gets a lot of love here on this site, as we named it our Best Car of 2024.

It’s important to note that Wards doesn’t rank its winners. The cars above are simply arranged in alphabetical order. Still, I don’t think anybody is putting the Nissan Leaf over the ZR1, as great as it is.

The Corvette’s 5.5-liter V8 is a barnburner in every sense of the word. It’s a flat-plane crank engine with the largest twin-turbochargers ever fitted to a production car. (They’re both 76-millimeter whirlers, in case you were curious.) Without any help from a lithium-ion battery pack, it makes 1,064 horsepower and 828 lb-ft of torque.

As the LT7’s Assistant Chief Engineer, Dustin Gardner, told me last year, everything in the Corvette’s history led to the creation of this engine.

“These [LT6 and LT7] engines—the Gemini twins, as we call them—I’ve been working on them for over seven years now. It’s always been the plan. The C8 architecture was there to enable this, right? The LT6, just being tall, could never go in the front, and the LT7, being so wide … and with this much power and torque, you need a chassis like this to be able to use it. You put 1,000 hp in a front-engined car and you’re not going to be able to use it.”

All that work is paying off, resulting in hardware like this as well as sub-seven-minute Nurburgring lap times. It’s a little wild to think that no other gas-only engine made this list, but rather than lamenting it, I’m choosing to be excited that manufacturers are still investing in big-power gas engines while they can.

Got a tip or question for the author? Contact them directly: caleb@thedrive.com