It’s not a stretch to say that the coolest parts that Detroit ever offered in the muscle car era, did not actually come factory installed on their cars. Take the legendary Chevy 302 Cross-Ram. This thing was delivered in the trunk of the car or bought over the dealer parts counter, they never actually put one on themselves at the factory. The Cross-Ram was developed for the Trans-Am series after GM looked at what their competition was doing with induction and figured that they ought to see for themselves what the potential benefits were.

As it turns out, they were pretty damned good. Replacing the previous 800CFM Holley with a pair of 600 CFM units on this intake manifold made the little 302 even more potent than it already was. Horsepower climbed over 460 and torque grew as well. There were a list of parts needed to actually make this work though and the included stuff like the throttle linkage, a special thermostat housing, oil fill tube, and all the rest of it. Bolting the intake on was the easy part, adding all the other stuff was where the real engineering came into play.

Are these great manifolds on the street? Not really. Are they awesome manifolds on the track when you are wringing your little engine out and hammering the daylights out of the thing? Yeah, kinda. Can they work on the street? Sure, we have seen guys do it but they spent their time getting the carbs setup right and making sure the thing was not drowning in fuel at idle.

$6,000 gets you this rare and real piece of Chevy history. Sure you could find and Edelbrock or an Offy cross ram but they aren’t as cool as the factory engineered and designed piece. We’d say factory installed but, well, we already told you why that won’t work!

eBay: This unmolested 302 Cross-Ram intake is awesome and really rare