I didn't know that. I wasn't familiar with the Northstar engine. Outsourcing is a good thing because it often saves the manufacturer money because some one else has already gone and done all the R&D. It also gives the manufacturer time to offer something quickly while they work on their own project.

It's interetsting to see where these pairings go in the long run. I'm curious about Alpina and BMW. Alpina is a big time BMW tuner in Europe. They aren't well known here in the US. They have offered two cars through BMW dealerships in the US. One was a Z8 with an automatic transmission back in 2003. Z8's only came with a stick and had the old M5 V8. I believe those Alpina Z8s were actually the last of the Z8s produces. The latest is the B7 which is the 7 series with a supercharged 500 HP V8.



Oh and probably the most relevant marriage, at least to this group, would be Ford and Shelby.

 

i have a northstar, unfortunatly its the 4.0 and not the 4.6, but these engines respond to boost very very well, i've seen a set-up where it was the stock nothstar with a vortec running 5lb's and pushing 525hp