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Remember the Cadillac Northstar engines? They were a bunch of highly-advanced, DOHC V-6 and V-8 engines built by Cadillac from the ’90s all the way to 2011. In the early days of the Third Millenium, the Northstar made its way into prototype racing in the middle of the Riley & Scott-developed Cadillac LMP that raced for just three years. This is the fourth chassis ever made, and it was raced by the factory in the American Le Mans Series and at Le Mans in 2000 and 2001. Sadly, unlike the current Cadillac DPi-V.R, the LMP project was ambitious, but the money flow stopped just as the car was getting good and GM ditched its plans of replicating Ford’s Le Mans glory.
Believe it or not, Cadillac first raced at Le Mans in the year 1950 when Briggs S. Cunningham brought two Series 61 models, the first Americans to race at Le Mans in two decades. One of the two Caddies featured an aerodynamic bodywork designed in the Grumman Aircraft wind tunnel with the aim being to achieve a low drag coefficient. Half a century later, Cadillac returned at Le Mans with an angular-looking prototype that, while looking quite a bit like Cadillac’s products at the time, was underpinned by a proven chassis. The problem, though, was the engine. It was always about the Northstar, and it took Cadillac two years to make it reliable and then, in year number three, they finally started working on performance, and the results started to come. The fourth year was supposed to be the one when everything came together, and the target was locked on the laurels everyone was after – but it never happened.
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