Powered by Ford

Ford had long known that most car buyers want a little something extra under the hood.  When they offered the first mass production flathead V8 engine in the 1932 Ford the factories couldn't keep up with the demand, even though the country was in the middle of the Great Depression.  Ford not only raised the performance bar, they kicked off a horsepower war that is still going on today.

Despite being first to the V8 party, Ford was playing catch up going into the 60s.  In the 50s the Detroit automakers realized that Americans wanted bigger and more powerful cars, and they all designed new V8s to power them.  Most manufacturers had two different engines; a "small block" that in various displacements could power everything from compacts to full-size sedans, and a "big block" for trailer-towing and high performance applications.

Developing a new engine was a big, expensive job that would influence the maker's cars for years to come; getting it right was critical to the long term success of the brand.  However during this critical time, product decisions at Ford were being made by the "Whiz Kids" - a group of fresh from college statisticians and accountants who had made a name managing the Army Air Force during WWII, and had been hired by Henry Ford II to help him get control of the massive business he had inherited from his grandfather.  Unfortunately the Whiz Kids knew nothing about the auto business;  they focused on building practical, efficient cars that were also boring and that no one wanted to buy (think "Edsel").  Compared to the competition's new engines, Ford's V8s were physically smaller and had narrower cylinder heads with smaller valves and ports that limited power potential.

But as the saying goes, "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger".  Ford engineers pulled out every hot-rod trick in the book to squeeze every bit of horsepower possible from the basic engine designs they had to work with.  Solid lifter camshafts, big valve heads, tri-power and dual-quad carburetion, tunnel-port intakes, all made appearances in Ford showrooms.  And the ultra-compact small block had an unexpected silver-lining: it could be shoehorned under the hood of tiny English roadsters, turning otherwise agrarian little cars like the AC Ace and Sunbeam Alpine into Corvette-killers.

Above is a photo I took at a car show sometime back in the 80s showing the ultimate bit of Ford engine development, the 427 SOHC.  Originally developed to take on Chrysler's Hemi in NASCAR, the monstrous overhead-cam heads were bolted to Fords rugged 7 liter big block, yielding 700+ horsepower in race trim.  But Ford's success was short lived. The last thing Bill France wanted in NASCAR were exotic engines pushing up the cost of competitive racing; hearing carefully leaked rumors of Chrysler developing a DOHC Hemi to counter Ford, he would ban the SOHC motor before it ever raced.  Ford sold a few to drag racers and the few crazies who had to have the fastest Galaxie on their block no matter the price, and the ultimate Ford big block quietly faded into history.