WHAT WAS THE LAST NEW VEHICLE WITH A PUSHROD FOUR-CYLINDER SOLD IN USA?

Overhead-valve internal-combustion engines, in which the valves are located in the cylinder head and actuated by a block-mounted camshaft via pushrods, go way back in automotive history. Production four-cylinder pushrod engines first appeared on American roads in the early years of the 20th century, and they were available in new cars and light trucks here until… when?

The word pushrod is critical here, because Ford installed the oddball CVH straight-four in the US-market Focus through 2004. That engine is what's known as a "cam-in-head" design, in which there are OHV-style lifters and rocker arms but the camshaft lives in the cylinder head instead of the block and therefore needs no pushrods to work the rockers.

We're also not counting crate motors, weird gray-market stuff from countries that no longer exist, handmade engines built in backyard sheds, etc. We're talking mass-produced four-cylinder engines with overhead valves and block-mounted camshafts, sold new in the United States!

Seemingly obsolete automotive technology can live on for many years after we might expect. New cars with four-wheel drum brakes were available here all the way through 1979, for example, and it gets even more interesting when we talk about transmissions in new US-market cars.

The final two-speed automatic transmissions went in 1973 Chevrolets; the final three-speed manuals went in 1981 GM cars and 1987 GM trucks; the final three-speed automatics were available in the 2002 Toyota Corolla/Chevrolet Prizm; and the very last four-speed manuals here were installed in 1996 Toyota Tercels (you can still buy new cars with five-speed manuals, but that situation can't last much longer).

The 1980s were great years for fans of four-cylinder pushrod engines in the United States, with everybody from Subaru to Cadillac offering them in new vehicles. The smörgåsbord of such engines remained very generous here fairly deep into the 1990s, but then those newfangled overhead-cam motors got the upper hand, shoving most of the pushrod four-bangers to the side.

The American Motors 2.5-liter engine stayed in production after Chrysler bought AMC in 1987, and it was almost the winner here: The final examples were installed in 2002 Dodge Dakotas and Jeep Wranglers.

Some folks mix up the AMC 2.5 with the similar-looking GM Iron Duke, which is understandable because plenty of AMCs and even some Jeeps got Duked. The last year for a member of the Iron Duke family to be installed in a new production vehicle here was 1993, however.

Then there's the Chevrolet 153, originally designed for use in the Chevy II/Nova, which still gets confused with the AMC 2.5 and Iron Duke now and then.

The last four-cylinder pushrod engine sold in new vehicles here was a General Motors product, as it turns out: the GM 122, which was installed in the basest of base-model rear-wheel-drive Chevrolet S-10 and Isuzu Hombre pickups for the 2003 model year.

The 122 was developed in order to power the GM J-Body cars, the best-known of which was the Chevrolet Cavalier, and it hit the scene in the 1982 model year. It survived in the J-Cars all the way through the 2002 Cavalier and its Pontiac Sunfire sibling. By the late 1990s, the 2.2-liter truck version had been renamed the Vortec 2200, and that's what went into those S-10s and their Hombre-badged Isuzu twins.

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2024-04-05T14:33:16Z dg43tfdfdgfd