Okay, I am going to settle this arguement.
Everyone is right, and everyone is wrong. Both car companies have made some great stuff, and they have made some junk. Let me further my point:
I work for a racing engine school called ETC Racing Programs. (www.etcracingprograms.com) Our business is teaching people how to build high performance racing engines. All we do all day everyday is racing engine related. We teach the UAW factory workers how to build race motors. The people who teach our classes are professional racing engine builders that build NASCAR, NHRA, IHRA, BUSCH, WINSTON CUP, SCCA, need I say more? Now that you know that I am qualified, here is the truth: all engines are the same. There is NO DIFFERENCE between a chevy motor and a ford motor or a BMW motor for that matter. Any engine is good, if they follow the rules.
Any engine is good if all the proper machining techniques are followed. That means all the cylinders are are 90 degrees to the crankshaft, the main bore is straight, the crank is indexed, basically the engine is "blueprinted."
Part of our running our class is buying engines. We have seen junk from FORD and GM. We purchase crate motors for class use. We have 302's, 351's 514's from ford and 454's and 350's from GM. When we get these engines, we check things like line bore, piston to wall clearance, piston to valve clearance, bearing clearance, etc. Every single engine we recieve has something wrong with it. It doesn't matter if it's GM or Ford. As far as which engine comes from the facory with more power, We've dyno'ed a lot of GM crate engines that say they make 300 at the flywheel, and when we engine dyno them, they only make 260.
Both brands of engine can and will make awesome amounts of horsepower, despite what's cast into the block. It really doesn't matter how they came from the factory, I PROMISE EVERY PERSON HERE that if you took a crate ford or chevy engine, blueprinted and balanced it, you would make 50-70 bhp at the flywheel. They are that messed up from the factory. GM and FORD have to put out hundreds of motors a day. Do you really thing they are going to make every single one perfect to the ten thousands of an inch they need to be? No.
We have students that are making 1500 horsepower from a ford big block, we also have students running 2000 bhp mopar engine.
The bottom line is they are all the same, you can make anything go fast, you just have to have the attention to detail to do it right.
There is no special magic to having a fast engine; they all have rods, pistons, rocker arms, etc. Making them all work together correctly is just and making them go fast is just a matter of doing the job right the first time.
