Admittedly I screwed the pooch yesterday. It was 4/26 and I did not include one iota of cool Hemi or Max Wedge stuff on the blog. The Mopar guys let me have it with some Grade A hate mail. Thankfully, their angry yelling reminded me that today is a kick ass gearhead date as well, 4/27. Other than the 426 Hemi, there is not a more mythical or vaunted cubic inch displacement than 427ci. Both Ford and Chevy slayed the competition in the 1960s with big block engines measuring out to 427ci.
It would be an argument to last the ages in trying to settle which 427 is better, the Ford or the Chevy. Certainly, Ford took their platform to the technological end with the SOHC program and Chevy’s 427 has been a terror on the drag strip since the moment it rolled off of the Tonawanda assembly line in 1966. The SOHC engine that Ford built was intended for NASCAR but the sanction banned it before ever seeing it compete. The Chevy 427 certainly lived a longer service life than the Ford variant which was phased out for the 428 by 1968.
Both engines live on as examples of Detroit’s horsepower wars of the 1960s. While they were not the ultimate engines produced, they certainly have the greatest aura. Below are videos of these engines roaring on the dyno!
