Ford or Chevy V8s?

[wilf leek]

Adam - you naughty chap you. Fancy stirring up these fine American folk with a question like that!

Ok, here's my view, FWIW.

Indigenous Americans tend to be either "Ford Guys" or "Chevy Guys", and never the twain shall meet. Rather like Australians fall into either the Holden (GM) or Ford camps.

We never really had that culture in the UK, so purely because the drag race boys latched onto Chevy V8s early on, Joe public associated the words "American V8" with Chevy, and usually small blocks. Big Blocks were just so far outside the range of the average English guy's motoring experience as to be simply marked down as "American excess", and ignored.

In those early days, there were far more aftermarket tuning parts available for Chevy than for Ford engines, and the Ford items ran out a lot dearer than their GM counterparts.

That really isn't the case these days, and there is a miniscule difference between the cost of a Ford or Chevy small block for similar power outputs. Probably Chevy has an edge in trick aftermarket parts still, but it is a small edge.

Big Block is different - And I will allow others to comment on that, but in my view, there are few if any engine builders in the UK who properly understand Ford Big Blocks, and not many who understand Chevy ones. The hallowed Ford 427so engine from the Cobra is now a rare and expensive item, to be cherished and loved by only a very few of the very best engine builders. SO much so that brand new blocks are now being made to cater for the insatiable demand.

And now the $64k question - which engine to put into a Cobra replica?

Let me say here and now that IMHO, there is no intrinsic merit or demerit in engines from either camp. There are no significant differences in weight, size, or performance characteristics between a Ford and a Chevy sb. Each has it's fair share of tricks to extract the best from any given component combination. BUT!!!

The Cobra was Ford's weapon against GM on the race track in the 60's. It beat the living $hit out of the Corvettes for a while there. And Ford took the smile from Enzo's face at LeMans, although it had to put the Cobra powerplant into the GT40 to do it.

To put a GM engine into a vehicle inextricably bound up with Ford race lore is therefore unthinkable, if you have any feel for, or knowledge of, that period at all. So my vote goes to the Ford engine in a Cobra replica, and that's just what I did. I have become a pariah in UK replica circles for my constant preaching of this immutable law. NO GM ENGINE SHOULD BE FOUND IN A COBRA! And yet they still do it, poor deluded fools.

After all - how many Corvette guys even contemplate putting a 351W into their cars? It just ain't done. It just ain't even thought about, and neither should the concept of a Chevy engine in a Cobra be.