How Did Chevy's 2.2L Ecotec Compare To The 2.2L OHV It Replaced?
Around the turn of the century, streets and parking lots were filled with a plethora of tuner cars. Honda Civics, Toyota Celicas, and Nissan Sentras acted as canvases for creatives. Chevrolet was part of this scene — in a lesser capacity — with the Chevy Cavalier. It was powered by a 2.2-liter OHV inline-four unless you sprung for the Z24 version, which had a 2.4-liter twin-cam engine I4. The former made 115 horsepower and 135 pound-feet of torque while the latter made a healthier 150 horsepower and 155 pound-feet of torque.
Both engines had cast-iron blocks and were considered reliable, but they weren't exactly modern. GM was looking toward the future and wanted to build something that could grow with Chevy's needs while also providing a better base for modifications. In 2002, Chevy added the LS Sport Cavalier trim, which boasted an all-new engine. It had a 2.2-liter aluminum-block four-cylinder engine that the company called Ecotec.
While it had the same displacement as the base Cavalier, the new Ecotec engine was thoroughly modern. It was a 16-valve engine (unlike the eight in the OHV version) with dual overhead camshafts, rather than a single cam mounted between the block and head. It made more power than the OHV, with 140 horsepower and 150 pound-feet of torque, but it still wasn't as strong as the 2.4-liter in the Z24.
Even the most highly-calibrated butt dyno couldn't tell a difference between the Z24 and LS Sport in terms of everyday performance, but the Ecotec opened the door for greater modifications. This included factory mods, like the Ecotec-powered front-wheel-drive drag car Chevy campaigned, which made 750 horsepower on the stock block. That's an incredible result for an engine designed to make only 140.
The goal was to promote aftermarket tuning for GM's J-Body platform so potential buyers would see it as a viable alternative to the sport compacts of the day. It never made the cover of a video game or became the feature car in a "Fast & Furious" movie, but it did have a vibrant online community that is still accessible today. It showed that GM was interested in enthusiasts of vehicles other than the Camaro, Firebird, or Corvette. It showed GM was interested in younger buyers.
The Cavalier would be replaced by the Cobalt, which offered a supercharged or turbocharged Ecotec engine in its high-performance SS variant, depending on the year. The 2.2 OHV appeared in the 2002 Cavalier and Sunfire, but it was later put out to pasture. One notable place that the engine appeared was in the Grumman LLV postal carrier truck. Eventually, even the Cobalt went away, but the Ecotec branding continued to live on in a litany of engines.
