If there was any real benefit, don't you think AMC would have done it? Thousands, if not 10s of thousands of R&D before these engines were produced.
Here's my simple answer your question... No...
Here's my reasoning behind that...
If anything AMC spent most of their R&D in flowing their heads and re-designing the ports/chamber sizes etc. AMC had to of known that their heads were the cap on the bottle so to speak. If the heads can't flow it the heads won't give it... I also don't think AMC had the luxury to completely re-design their heads to get the maximum performance out of them. I'm sure that if AMC had a sound financial backing and a large following of all walks of life that they would've produced something mind blowing years down the line But, that just wasn't the case.
As is, by the time AMC started producing the known AMC V-8's with the better flowing dog-leg heads they were already behind the power curve for performance. (Arguementively speaking). The other "major" manufacturers were making large strides in their performance catagory and getting the crowds to follow. As AMC was falling further behind they were trying to figure out ways to draw more money and get the attention of the people FAST. If a society is hungry for performance, you feed it performance. If a society want's a cheap & reliable vehicle, you give it a cheap & reliable vehicle. If they want a mixture of both you make sacrifices and AMC did that... Did it hurt them in the long run... who knows for sure. AMC did alright for a little while but there were too many factors/obstacles that played against them. What would you consider to be the Peak years for AMC power?... 68 to 71-ish... And what were the other manufacturers glory years?... Compare the body styles as well as the various options. The typical human behavior/responses are like a cult of personality, one man does it and stands high... so everybody else want's to do it... So, they follow the leader so to speak. AMC vehicles were cheaply priced and ideal of the average blue shirt worker but dang... What were they thinking when it came to their body styles? If they had such great and inovative "thinkers" why didn't they create better body styles?. #-o I could be way off basis and it wouldn't be the first time but, researching AMC history, reading about their various problems and match that against a rapidly changing economy they were doomed from the get go. It was only a matter of time before they were pushed into the funnel head first leaving trails of what could've been.
This is a blanket statement/question; What other manufacturers offer various degress of heads? and Why is this? Flow characteristics? Performance? AMC was definitely onto something great but I don't think they had the full kitchen to play with during those years of a performance hungry culture/society.
