A new engine arriving in a crate on your doorstep is something we have all dreamt of at one time or another. The scene goes something like this: You invite your buddies over and unwrap the engine from its shipping box with a clean hammer and crowbar. Then you all gaze for hours on end at the new powerplant, while you recite exactly how much horsepower and torque the engine makes and the precise rpm that each peak occurs. You didn’t have to make a single trip to the junkyard, machine shop, or engine dyno because all the research, parts gathering, and assembly was done for you by your faithful servants at GM, Ford, Mopar, or wherever. You just had to sign on the dotted line and foot the bill.
So right now, while you're busy calculating crawl ratios or designing your own multilink suspension, an engine-building expert may be assembling the horsepower factory of your dreams to propel your 4x4 for the next 100,000 miles (or more) without any physical or mental effort on your part. And the more engines they build the lower the price each engine will sell for. All of this is great -if the manufacturers are selling the kind of crate engine you would want to build if you could. That's where we come in.
We at 4-Wheel & Off-Road want to know where you see the crate engine market going in the next five years. Are the current engines too high-tech? Too low-tech? Too expensive? Is there too much emphasis on EFI, or should all four-barrel carbs be tossed into the recycle bin? Do you want to see a diesel crate engine or more V-6s? We want to hear from you! We'll record your answers and pass them along to the companies that build these engines.
We want you to vote on which one of the following engines you'd put in your rig if given the chance. Read over the engine recipes in our September '02 issue (page 126), and then tell us what you really want to see in a 4x4 crate engine and we'll compile all the results and print them in an upcoming Drivelines section.