It is super expensive to custom build an engine these days. Shops have a lot of expenses that they have to cover so someone has to pay for it. The shop I work with has cut way back on "oddball" jobs since they usually don't pay very well. He doesn't do Flathead Fords anymore or old tractor engines or weird stuff like 50's Cadillac engines. The weird stuff requires a ton of time and most of the customers aren't willing to pay for it. A lot of guys who have weird engines are guys who have owned them for a long time and they still think that a full engine rebuild should be around $1500. So the guys who have the weird stuff that takes a lot of extra time are the same guys who don't want to pay much.
Crate engines wiped out a bunch of business around here. The local tracks switched over to crate engine racing which is probably good for everyone but it does wipe out a lot of business for the shops. There are still a lot of bracket racers who want custom engines built and there are a fair number of guys with muscle cars who aren't afraid of spending $10,000 to $15,000 for a ground up stroker build. But most of the rebuild business has gone away over the past 20 years. The engines in new cars last a long time now so there is no need for rebuilds. I have a Toyota 4Runner with 220,000 miles on it and it doesn't use any oil. Still has the original exhaust system on it. When I was a kid my dad rebuilt the engines in our cars at 100,000 miles. They just didn't last much past that back then.
To add one thing to andys very well written post, very few people today will rebuild an engine from a car or truck. Walk through a wrecking yard. They are full of late model stuff that looks like with a wash and wax you could drive them. 8, maybe 10 years old, almost perfect in every way and there they are. Today, when a car is 10 years old the owners look at the value of the vehicle and say why spend 7-8k to R&R and rebuild the engine in this thing when the whole vehicle is worth less than that? So they junk it and move on. No reason to put cash in something that doesn't meet the value.
Our society has lost what value is. Most stuff today is just junk. That's why it has so little value. Decades of manipulation of the money, artificially low interest rates, credit to anyone with a job without regard to ability to pay has devalued everything. The hidden tax of inflation has so devalued the dollar that it's worth about .02 of what it was just over 100 years ago.
Unless something big changes quickly, the engine building business will be essentially dead. The machines and tooling will be worthless here, but third world toilets will buy them up, as they will be rebuilding the junk they have. Or tuning out low grade reman crap for poverty wages for use in the US market.
It's just the sad fact. The automobile, once the proud banner of American pride, freedom and affluence has become a Marxist utilitarian tool at best. Kids today would rather have a phone than a cool car. Hell, most of my 17 year olds friends don't drive yet. Some don't think they ever will! Or want to. They plan on going to a college where they can walk or ride mass transit where ever they go, and for something else will use an uber. If they want to travel, they will rent a car. When questioned on who in the hell will drive it, most never think that far. You can't rent a car if you can't drive. I think they suspect they will always have a friend or two who can drive and will be willing to do the rental and drive. Driving is a chore. An unnesessecary expense.
Most major cities today are building areas that are wholly self contained. You can live, work, shop, go to the theatre or movies all within walking distance. No one will own a car. And retards are flocking to these places. I only live a few hours from the Pacific Ocean. Most of my sons friends have never seen the pacific and it's literally in their back yard. Never seen a pro football or baseball game and it's a bit over 2 hours for that. And they really don't care. They talk about comicon and goofy crap like that. When I point out you have to travel they say they'll fly in and then rent a car.
It's a losing proposition. Idiotic regulations, manipulation of the money and credit, raising people who are just indifferent at best to driving, untold BILLIONS spent on worthless mass transit, refusal to update roads and highways, traffic flow patterns that in the late 1960'and early 1970's would have had people kicking ass are tolerated today as just the way it is.
There not getting around it. Just one of the many reasons three score and ten years are appointed to man to live. Most of my dads generation are dead. The rest are too old to drive. Could they see the way it is today, IMO, they'd be stunned and saddened. Not many countries around the world have a road system to make driving what it is/was here. So they just don't know. It's a lost part of Americana that is slowly being eaten away.
