Page "Oldsmobile Cutlass" Paragraph 9

Ultimately the Jetfire engine was far ahead of its time.

Instead of seeking more power by simply making a bigger engine, GM tried to perfect their novel small-block V8, which was already as such a big engine.

With forced induction and an already high compression ratio the JetFire was capable of producing more torque than a conventional naturally aspirated engine that was twice its size, hence significantly improving the engines efficiency and usability in real-life driving conditions, turbo lag not being an issue at motorway speeds.

But since turbo and / or supercharging the engine essentially means forcing the compression in the combustion chamber even higher, the JetFire was prone to ' spark-knock ' and without modern engine management systems the only way to mitigate this was to use a 50 / 50 mixture of methanol and distilled water.