[1]Pop’s Performance [2] out of Elizabethtown, KY., and crew build and reproduce the famous Ford SOHC 427 also known as the “Cammer” engine. In fact, they live and breathe Ford FE engines.
These are the guys to go to if you need an engine for your Shelby GT500 or your Cobra. Pops has mastered the famous Cammer using legendary racer, Bill Coon’s [3] redesigned cylinder heads that offer revised ports and much stronger castings resulting in possibly the best cylinder heads to date for the SOHC engine.
These new heads fit all early Cammers and has all the parts available to build a new one; in fact, Pop’s Performance sells a complete conversion kit to convert your FE engine into a HEMI-stomping monster, yes your very own 427 Ford SOHC Cammer engine!
This was the engine that was banned by NASCAR in 1964. As Chrysler was dominating NASCAR, NHRA, and the IHRA with their hemispherical King Kong motor, Ford came up with their own version of the HEMI, based off their 427 side-oiler in late 1963. They designed a set of overhead cam hemispherical combustion chambered heads thus birthing the Cammer.
The engine was build specifically for NASCAR competition and was expected pound the Mopars and everything else into the sand. Chrysler was so terrified of losing its grip on its standing, that they scrambled to create a 10,000rpm SOHC 426 HEMI and waved it in front of NASCAR officials telling them the 427 SOHC motor was 1) never available in the necessary 500 production vehicles to meet homologation rules, 2) if the Cammer wasn’t banned, it would bring its own “Doomsday Machine” to the track.
Mopar got their wish and the Ford motor was banned from NASCAR. That’s politics for you. The Cammer went on to compete and race in many NHRA and IHRA drag racing competitions and was a force to be reckoned with.