Why's everybody hatin' on the 305?

[slotard]

Originally Posted by Blessed66

The old phrase of "there is no replacement for displacement" carries a lot of weight with many people, and the fallacy of it seems to go unmentioned. Obviously, there is some truth to the phrase, but it's not always a night and day difference - like people may want to believe.

I guess people don't want to accept that 4 cylinder engines can be (and have been) built that chew up V8s and spit them out.

Correct, there are certainly reasonable replacements for displacement. Good heads and boost can help a lot. However, if you already picked your platform (for example, SBC) and how civilized you want it to be (DD vs street/strip vs track only), and have a budget, displacement tends to be very helpful for getting good power. If you start with no parts, $5k parts/machine shop budget, the 350 will pretty much always walk all over the 305... but a 383 will walk on the 350, and so on. The cost of extra displacement is relatively low vs amazing heads, and extra displacement helps get you more power without losing streetability. A 450hp 350 can be a reasonable DD, a 450hp 305 won't work as well there.

Of course, for plenty of people a 200hp 305 is all they need and they're happy with it, and get better mileage. Nothing wrong with that.