Mighty Chevy 327 L-79 Beats Big Blocks

The Chevy 327 L-79 was one of the most remarkable small block performance engines of the 1960s, a precision-engineered machine that turned ordinary cars like the Nova SS into drag strip weapons that nobody saw coming. While the horsepower race of that era was dominated by big block engines with massive displacement numbers, the L-79 proved that intelligent engineering could accomplish what brute size alone could not. Producing 350 horsepower from just 327 cubic inches through a carefully matched combination of an aggressive hydraulic camshaft, a 585 CFM Holley four-barrel carburetor, free-flowing intake and exhaust, and an 11-to-1 compression ratio, the L-79 crossed a threshold that almost no production street engine of its time had ever reached — more than one horsepower per cubic inch, from a hydraulic cam engine sold at a dealership with a warranty card.