A little more compact, yes. Weight? The FE blocks weigh 650 to 670 lbs
dry in cast iron. If they made this new motor aluminum it'd probably
save about 80 to 100 lbs off those numbers but I'll bet it winds up
close to that if they are going for large displacement. The cast iron
5.4 DOHC weighs 540 lbs and the cast iron 5.4 SOHC weighs 525 lbs. With
a supercharger and intercooler (dry) you'd add about 150 lbs. Make
those aluminum block 5.4's and you've got about the same weight even
with the huffer. The 6.8L Modular V10 weighs in at 640 lbs (cast iron,
I believe). I don't see the weight benefits jumping out at me.

Cheaper to build? Possibly, it will depend on the engineering that goes
into the heads and block. However, the Ford OHV Windsor-based crate
motors that are out there are so inexpensive because there are so many
folks, inlcuding Ford, making and using a ton of them: well over 50
million Windsor/Cleveland 302 and 351's have been built by Ford alone
since 1961. The design and tooling are very well established. Ford only
made something like 6500 of the original FE 427's. If this "Hurricane"
is a brand new design there's no way it'll come in at equivalent
pricing. Where's the tooling for this one at? Australia? I don't see
where the cost is going to improve on this one without most of the
process already existing somewhere.

It'll be interesting to see since they just put a new cammer Modular
motor with larger displacement on the market and it's more than
powerful enough normally aspirated. Certainly another offering would be
a fine thing but it's clear that the fleet companies have already
accepted that they can service cammers as well as pushrod motors. I'd
be interested to see what the long term reliability numbers are on the
cammers versus pushrod motors. It's a given that it takes a little
longer to service the top end of a cammer because of the care that has
to taken in aligning the cams and chains. But it they are doing this
less often, then they may be seeing an actual benefit instead of a
cost.

I dunno. I actually don't care. It's clear the Modular family is here
for a long while so I'll just keep my cammers .
..
Dan
2003 Cobra convertible
With some stuff and things