With millions of Gen III/IV engines out there, the least desirable of the bunch is the 4.8L V8 (293ci) that's GM's 21st century version of the classic 283 small-block. The 4.8 uses a very small 3.78-inch bore but longer stroke of 3.27 compared with the original 283's 3.875-inch bore and 3.00-inch stroke. The point of all this is that the 4.8L is available for very little money. What got me to thinking about this engine is the 600 hp we made last year when we put a ProCharger D1SC blower on a junkyard 302 Ford outfitted with a set of RHS heads and a hot Comp Cams hydraulic roller cam. That motor made 400 hp normally aspirated and then with the blower it made 600 hp on pump gas. The 4.8L has a smaller bore, but even the stock aluminum 4.8L heads offer respectable flow, especially if they were given a slight pocket porting, especially on the exhaust side. I think this engine could make 550 to 575 hp with the addition of a good 114-degree lobe-separation angle hydraulic roller cam and a carbureted intake manifold. Use the ProCharger as a blow-through application with that MSD LS6 add-on ignition controller and you have a bitchin' little small-block that makes excellent power and could deliver decent gas mileage when you don't have your foot buried in the throttle. Of course, if you chose to run this engine on EFI, power would remain the same but fuel mileage would increase measurably. Of course, if you're into fabrication, a single turbo would work even better because you don't have the parasitic losses of driving the blower off the crank. Either way, it's a cool idea to combine power with over-the-road efficiency.