Long before Gary Gabelich set a world speed record on the salt flats of Bonneville in Utah on 23 October 1970 with his 'Blue Flame' built by Reaction Dynamics from Milwaukee in the USA, 'Blue Flame' was already a name established by Chevrolet in the car world.
In 1953 the first Chevy with such a six-seater - linked to the Powerglide automatic gearbox - appeared on the market. Of course the engine was painted (bright) blue on the outside. The 235 CuIn, 3.850 cm3 power source was equipped with various news items. Hydraulically operated (head) valves and permanent high pressure lubrication. The latter, however, only for cars that were ordered with a Powerglyde automatic transmission. It would be one of the best engines from Chevrolet, mounted until the end of 1963 in all basic models of the brand. The 'small block' V8 appeared in 1955. With regard to the name Blue Flame, we have to go back to 1934. Chevrolet used it in all its advertisements. That was because the engineers working on the development of that engine found that the "spark" of the spark plugs was blue instead of the usual blue / yellow. Twenty years later, that came in handy. Incidentally, and despite the great success, the Blue Flame Chevrolet engine was a strange design. The biggest restriction to get more power out of it was in the three inlet and four outlet ports. A so-called Siamese arrangement. The cylinders one and two, three and four as well as five and six shared an inlet channel; on the outlet side, cylinders two and three as well as four and five shared their outlet channel. The first and the sixth cylinder had their 'own' exhaust channel. In addition, the design of the intake manifold was such that the middle two cylinders were supplied with more "gas" than the four at the end. That is why such a motor actually performs poorly and is idle restless ...