There's no better bang for your buck than the LS in today's market, hands down. And everyone's got different opinions on whether or not it's sane to put them in anything other than Chevy's, but to each their own. If I had an original, perfect condition, numbers matching '71 E-body I wouldn't even let the idea of an LS swap slip into my mind. But I have an '80 F-body with four doors, paint that's been decomposing for the past 20 years, and parts cobble together as I teach myself how to hotrod and I've toyed with the idea of an LS more than I'd care to admit. I'm not driving the car because it's a cool muscle car, but because I've turned every nut and bolt in the thing and it's fun to actually drive and not have the car drive you like most do these days- the experience par se. And that's how it is with a lot of today's car culture. I have no problem keeping up with today's pony cars either, the looks on their faces when they can't pull away from a 80's detroit brick is priceless. But I recently went to a roller cam setup and redid my cylinder heads and for the same price I could've had a whole ls setup, overdrive trans and all. Heck, with the money saved in gas and random parts over the next six months I could easily afford a cam and spring package to reliably make 500+ hp, easily. I like to drive and I like to drive hard, and 60 year old technology and design struggles to offer what today's technology and design has to offer. The LS head alone is an amazing chunk of metal, and the stock bottom end is no slouch either. The modern Hemi's may be able to make some power, but not as much as the LS without touching the short block internals. Maybe down the road I'll eventually LS swap my Volare, but being all mopar gets some kind of cool factor none of the LS swap cult can't get and I'm fine with dumping all my money into the mopar black whole of expensive parts.
The last test and tune I was at I raced my buddy in his 2015 Mustnag (lol) GT. He has the performance package- wide tires, launch control, "Shift Light" (dash turns red), all the bells and whistles. My 39 year old, 4000 lb, open diff, 255 street tires, small block mopar beat him the first few. He kept turning up the launch and in the last pass he only beat me by 0.017 seconds. We (I) had the crowd on edge with every pass and everyone and their mother came up to me wanting to see the car and asking what was done to it. There I was showing up on my buddy's car he's still making payments on.
But cars are made to be driven and it's always more fun to drive with obscure amounts of power and reliability. GM is producing the cheapest way to make affordable power and for people with a tight budget there's no better choice. I have no idea what Ford is doing, but Dodge obviously knows they can't beat the LS game so they went straight to the Hellcat, Demon, and now the Hellephant crate motor for outright production horsepower straight from the factory.
It makes sense why LS swaps are so popular and to not care for it with your own vehicles is perfectly okay. Brand loyalty or personal preference is perfectly fine, nothing wrong with going to a big block or turbo six instead of an LS, but what gets me are the people that hate for guys having fun with their own cars and actually hotrodding them. At Cars and Coffee, around here at least, there's two groups of guys, with the first being the bigger group by a lot: the guys who bought their cars the way they are, go to the dealership for every little thing, driving in showroom quality only to car shows and that's it because they're scared to break something or lose value. But then there's the guys who've spent countless hours, days, years on there cars perfecting it to how the enjoy it best. Could've stayed up all night to get the car together by morning. What makes one better than the other?
IMO kudos to the guys in post #1 like this who are having fun with what they love.