Here are my thoughts.......to the masses, what makes an engine a Ford, Chevy or Mopar boils down to the basic appearance of the block. Al is right, in that all these BIG aftermarket motors are exactly that, aftermarket motors........BUT.....you can get one of these blocks based on a Ford or Chevy. A 5.300 bore space Chevy, still LOOKS like a big Chevy, just based on the appearance of the block. Same for the Ford. Technically there is already a 5.0 bore space block out there you COULD call a Mopar, because it has a Mopar water pump face, is a skirted block and has a flat pan rail. Of course it's a CN billet, but there IS one.
Now for the heads. A GOOD head for ANY of these big bore space motors is going to be a symmetrical, spread port, wedge head. A configuration that came on NOTHING from the factory, but I guess is closer to a BBF than anything if you got right down to it............Now the Mopar guys are going to scream HEMI, but a TRUE HEMI head is NOT going to happen, nor is it needed. The Sonny's Hemi and the 99Hemi both are WAY closer to wedge than Hemi, so you can just forget the quest for the REAL big bore hemi.......So that brings us to this point. There are already some GREAT 5.0 spore space heads out there, so trying to make something LOOK like a Mopar is a frivolous thought. You are NOT going to make something WAY better than is already out there.
So to answer the original question that started this thread.......yeah, I would buy a 5.0 bore space block based from a Mopar......if I could get my choice of head bolt patterns and use some of the existing 5.0 heads out there........But NOT because it has a Mopar water pump and NOT because it had a Mopar trans pattern or something silly like that. The reason would be the skirted, cross bolted design of the block
