Garvin explained that in building engines for speed boats, he and his team had done pretty much all they could with a Chevy big block power plant, whereas the scope for a rotary design was larger.
“We started measuring a big block Chevy and seeing how many rotors [we could] fit in that spot,” said Garvin. “In the end, we came up with this design that is the exact shape of a big block Chevy. I basically made it to replace my boat engine.”
When put on a dyno, this 12-rotor rotary engine made around 800 lb-ft of torque at just 2,000 rpm – from a naturally-aspirated engine. And that’s just a taste of what the engine can do, as it’ll be able to spin all the way to 10,000 rpm.