Oh I know. I rebuilt several of Ford’s Emissions motors from that era.
They retarded the all cams several degrees, shrunk port and valve size in several engines and eliminated the 4BBl in all but the 460 IIRC by 79.
The fix on a fresh build? Strip the emissions, replace the cam with a pre 70 cam or even an Edelbrock Performer, add a 4BBL intake and a smaller 4bbl like a Holley vac secondary.
Swap the distributor and ignition with an MSD and without ever touching valves, ports or compression you are into solid HP/Torque numbers. Basic step 1 hot rodding like that will damn near double the mileage as well.
With a fresh build, 1.5-2 points of compression, headers and free flowing exhaust, you have even more of the good with zero downside. And mileage increases yet again.
My last build was the much reviled 400 ‘boat anchor’ done with all the useable Cleveland parts and the above basics in a 79 F250 4x4 W/Danas, C6 and a 205 case. It will light up 37 in Goodyears with no issue. 15 MPG highway.
Yea, but did they get 30 miles to the gallon at 70 mph? Just being funny and taking note of how far cars have advanced.
And the air is so much cleaner so who can fault the early initiative to solve that problem even if it sucked the HP out of the early 70s engines.