The LS7 7.0L Corvette engine is an enigma. Blasting from zero to 100km/h in the ZO6 Chevrolet Corvette in 3.7 seconds and flattening the standing quarter mile in 11.1 seconds, you?d never guess it has some pre-?50s mechanicals to achieve such dizzying heights.

And enigmatic it is. Its now-archaic 2-valve-per-cylinder overhead valve layout is the stuff vintage cars made use of. But hold your horses ? and there are some 505 of them lurking within the Yankee mill ? the LS7 has something else the Yanks could never do without ... a voluminous 7-litre cubic capacity.

However, to add to its muscles, it?s also fitted with panoply of modern day technology any engineer would pine for - and it?s capable of competing with most of the world?s top super cars, too. Much of the technology was robbed from none other than the Le Mans winning Corvette C6R.

But it has another un-Yankee trait for such a big mill ? a surprisingly impressive 10.8 litres per 100km highway fuel consumption.

The LS7 427 engine also reintroduced the small-block layout instead of the previous big-block philosophy into this 427 motor. The new LS7 has another novelty ? it?s the largest-displacement small-block set-up ever produced for the Corvette over its 50 years as a performance icon.

Easily identified by red engine covers with black lettering, the LS7 uses a different cylinder-block casting process with pressed-in steel cylinder liners to accommodate the big bores. It also features a different front cover, oil-pan, exhaust manifolds and cylinder heads among a host of other components to keep up with its more illustrious European super car rivals.

As with all true high performance engines, reciprocating components are based on competition-derived lightweight technology. The titanium connecting rods and intake valves are part of this process to attain the 7100rpm rev limit, which is surprisingly high for such a large engine.

The race-bred titanium connecting rods weigh just 464 grams each, some 30% less than the rods fitted in the previous LS2 V8. Besides being lightweight and allowing high-rpm performance and rpm range, titanium also makes the rods extremely durable.

A unique cylinder block casting procedure is used to better accommodate the large 104.8mm bores with pressed-in cylinder liners. Forged steel main bearing caps and forged steel crankshaft are also part of the high revving set-up, while the cast aluminium pistons are flat-topped.

To take the higher breathing and gas-flow rates, racing-derived CNC-ported aluminium cylinder heads with the titanium intake valves and sodium-filled exhaust valves take care of the massive air and gas flows while on the inlet side a low-restriction, tuned air intake system is fitted.

To this end, the cylinder heads are specifically designed to meet the high airflow demands of the 7-liter monster that now breathes 18% more air than the previous 6-liter LS2 V-8. Aiding and abetting all this is a high-lift hydraulic roller camshaft offering higher lift and wider timing phases.