Years ago I heard that all vehicles manufactured by GM, whatever the make, are equipped with “Chevy” engines. I don’t know that this is so but I thought there may be automotive experts among the Teeming Millions who can give me the correct information. 
Absolutely untrue. Often Chevys themselves had Buick or Pontiac or Oldsmobile engines. They mixed & matched all the time. I think GM got sued for this policy once.
You might’ve heard it mangled a bit. Chevy is just one division of GM and GM often uses the same engine throughout it’s line. It’s not uncommon to find the same parts in a Buick and a Chevy. With the merger between Diamler-Benz and Chrysler, you’re now starting to get Chryslers and Mercedes-Benz’s sharing the same parts, making more than a few Mercedes owners a little angry.
Acura is the luxury division of Honda, and if you pop open the hood of an Acura Integra, the valve cover says right there in huge honkin’ letters, “Honda.”
The Honda/Acura, Nissan/Infiniti and Toyota/Lexus affinities are pretty commonly known. IIRC, the Acura name is only used in North America; everywhere else, an Integra was a Honda.
GM is not the only car company that uses a single engines across different marquees. Volkswagen (Audi, Skoda, Bentley, Lamborghini, Bugatti, Seat), BMW (Mini, Rolls-Royce), Ford (Mercury, Lincoln, Jaguar, Volvo, Aston Martin, Land Rover, and pieces of Mazda and Kia) and DaimlerChrysler (Chrysler, Dodge, Plymouth, Jeep and pieces of Mitsubishi Motors and Hyundai) all do the same. Many companies also use engines made by other manufacturers. GM, for instance, bought Honda 3.5L V-6 engines for their latest Saturn SUV.
As noted, the GM lines tend to share a lot of components–including some engines. However, each division did tend to have some “signature” features, that often included specific engines for specific models of cars. GM got sued (late 70s?) for putting a Chevy engine into a series of popular Oldsmobiles when demand outstripped manufacturing capacity for that model. Since the car had been marketed with that particular engine, the switch was considered foul play.
At other times, different GM cars did share engines (or, at least blocks–usually milled out to slightly different displacements for different divisions) without any problem because they only identified it as the engine and not as the Iron Duke or whatever marketing label they thought was hot. Such shared engines, however, were GM engines coming out of Central Foundry, not “Chevy” engines, particularly.
Someone once told me that the front bumper and grille from a certain Pontiac would bolt right onto a certain Ford. Any truth to that?
Yeah, and you pay more for parts, too, depending on the make. I delivered auto parts in my teens and frequently mechanics, if they were working on a Cadillac and needed some part we were out of, would order the same part (motor mount, exhaust pipe, etc. for a Chevy or Buick, etc. A quick look at the illustrations in the back of the parts catalogs showed many (but not all) standard GM parts to be identical in every way to Cadillac parts. And a rep for the factory that manufactured our motor mounts told me that many parts are the same but packaged in different boxes under different part numbers so that higher priced car got higher priced parts. One mechanic I got to know told me he took advantange of this and routinely ordered GM, Ford or Chrysler parts for the Cadillacs, Lincolns, etc. he worked on (thus paying less for them himself–the price difference held throughout the supply chain) but he charged the customer the official luxury car price as shown in the parts catalogs.
This reminds me of liquid bleach: This laundry product is “chemically defined,” according to federal regulations; so when you buy Clorox or whatever other name brand of bleach, you’re paying for the fancy brand name, which costs more but doesn’t do a better job of bleaching your white laundry. :mad:
Slightly off-topic, but this answers something that has been bugging me for a couple years. In the Playstation game “Gran Turismo 2”, the car manufacturers were grouped in various geographical “areas” on the game map by country of origin. IIRC, “East” had all the Japanese automakers, “North” had European, “West” was British, and “South” was U.S./North American. I could never figure out why Acura was in the “South” with Ford, Chevy, Chrysler, etc. and not in the East with Toyota, Honda, etc. Now I know.
These days, the engines in GM cars use GM engines. But when you break it down, a lot of the GM engines today are varients of the old division engines. For instance, any 3.8 engine you find in any GM car today, is a varient of the 3.8 Buick engine. Including, the 3800 Series I/II engines found in Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, and Chevy vehicles. The LT1 engine used in the 90’s is a GM engine, however is a varient of the 350 Chevy engine from back in the day. So it can be said that the LT1 is a Chevy engine, as many parts from the 70’s Chevy engines will fit into late model LT1 engines. The newer motors are genuine GM motors and have no history with the old division motors. Examples of these would be the LS1/LS6 V8, as well as the 3.4 engine used in the 90’s FWD models such as Luminas, Monte Carlos, Grand Prix, Regals (W-Bodys), etc… And I’m sure many more.
Except when they use Honda engines.
Let me clarify. Any engine produced by GM, or varients of division motors used in GM cars today are considered GM engines.
In 1957, I bought a new Chevrolet Sta Wgn with V6 engine. When it was delivered, it came with a Buick 3.8L V-6 205HP engine.
I imagine that was gross horsepower, 'cause the 1988 Buick 3.8L V-6 generated 205 bhp, and I’d like to think that GM managed to improve the performance somewhat in 32 years.
They’ve also had to add a huge amount of power-sapping pollution control devices on the motor.
Do you remember which models? I’m not sure if I could answer it, but I’d like to try. The “shark’s teeth” grille that people used to put on custom 1950 Mercurys may have come from a Pontiac, but I’m not sure, not that things need to bolt up when doing a custom car anyway.
While a Pontiac to Ford swap would be a rare thing, GM did tend to use the same body design for different makes, changing only a few things like the grill and headlights or such. Ford did the same thing. Besides MSRP, I don’t know of any major differences between the early Mustangs and Mercury Capris of the early Eighties, to give one example.
It’s not really a matter of trying to improve performance over 32 years. Think about the weight of the wagon with that engine, then think about any GM car in 1988 with that engine. The 1988 cars are much lighter then the 1957 cars. Therefore they will be much faster, even with the same power ratings.