Ford DOHC V8: $5k used

Chevy LS1: $3200 used

For $1800 I'll take all-aluminum 32V modern design, thanks. Of course, for another $2k I'll dare to be different.

Here's the thing: back in the glory days of hot rodding, simply polishing the combustion chambers and gasket-matching the intake and exhaust ports was good for a 25% horsepower boost, no tweakage needed. Wanna get dumb about it? Change the cam. Okay, go taller in the intake, throw some headers on it. But that's what you get stock now. The easy tweaks have been done. The rest of it is software - when I have computer control over the ignition charge, the injector load, the valve timing and the spark advance on a per-cylinder basis, I don't need speed parts. I need a laptop.

Ford is a very successful company. They make a quality product. My beef is it's all fuggly, though, and on the inside it all feels like it was built by Fisher Price. I'm trying to think of the last pretty car Ford made. I think it was probably the GT40. Which ain't near as pretty as the Porsche 917, McLaren M6, Chevron B16 or Lola T70. And none of which are as pretty as a Ferrari 330. Really - that's Ford in a nutshell. Nice product, but uglier than everything else.