My friend Jim Grubbs owns Jim Grubbs Motorsports, the machine shop that does most of the work for engines that I build for the magazine and for myself. Jim is a diehard Ford fan. He mentioned to me that the new LS-series GM engines are more like Ford engines now than GM engines. He’s got a good point. First of all, the LS series uses a center-main thrust like a small-block Ford. Then there’s the 10 head bolts per cylinder—again just like an SBF. Less noticeable but still similar is the symmetrical port layout. The original small-block Chevy had intake ports that were paired or siamesed, while Fords use symmetrical port layouts with equal distance between each port. I’m sure that if we looked hard enough, Ford probably copied these traits from some other engine designer that predated the earliest small-block Ford by probably 50 years. This could certainly spark a debate that would be never-ending. But it’s clear that GM paid attention to ideas that work and incorporated them into the LS-series engine design. I, for one, am not complaining.