The reason I have never bought a set of Edelbrock heads is because they are too damned high priced. AMC and olds heads are significantly cheaper from Edelbrock than Pontiac heads are. I'm just not convinced Pontiac heads should be the most expensive street type aluminum head that Edelbrock makes. I'm fairly certain that olds and AMC combined don't sell a larger quantity of heads than Pontiac heads do. All 3 are orphaned engines so there is no advantages to the lower priced offerings.
All my projects have iron round port, and D port heads because of the expense of buying aluminum Edelbrock heads.
Edelbrock also jumped on the D port bandwagon after Kauffman went out on a limb, and brought aluminum D ports to market. If you want to talk about someone else copying the guys that made the first aluminum D port heads look at Edelbrock, they aren't that much different than Kaufman D ports are.
If Larry Wenzler hadn't started the ball rolling would Edelbrock ever have made a Pontiac head?
I've heard that Arnie and other people high on the Pontiac totem pole begged Vic Edelbrock for years before he finally gave in and started production for Pontiacs, and was still not 100% convinced he'd sell enough heads to make money. I think maybe that is why he set the price so high, then he kept it high. $2-300 higher priced than olds and AMC per head. I've never heard a satisfactory reason why they are so high priced over other street type Performer heads.
I don't expect Pontiac heads to be priced like a SBC is, but they are easily the highest priced aluminum street type head Edelbrock sells. maybe the Speedmaster will bring Edelbrock to a more realistic price, but maybe not...
Capitalism has been known to cause competition, and bring down prices on inflated items. Look what happened to GM sheetmetal prices once they had competition for body parts.....
