[DavidNJ]

He is arguing for big bores, not short strokes. Again, unless the rules limit displacement, there is no reason to have it. Try to find a class not limited by displacement that has a shorter than maximum stroke.

Well, almost no reason. If you are limited in your breathing to large a displacement may limit the rev range. So you may get a rather peaky torque curve, which could be harder to drive.

There is one other problem with big bores. It is harder to get a good combustion shape. It becomes long and flat, needing a dome for compression. This, I believe, is one of the reasons nearly all production engines now have 82-87mm bores. A big more may be 92mm (MB 6.3).

EMC engines are very close to street engines. It required the builders to come up with packages that worked from 2500rpm to a 6500rpm peak. To some extent it became a contest of compression ratio, and also of combustion quality. Because breathing was the limit, the biggest bore wasn't necessarily an advantage.

The rods are not Honda, the journal sizes are. These are also common in NASCAR which also uses small main bearing diameters. With current steels and bearings, there is no need for those large journals. For example, most (all?) FE strokers use BBC rods with 2.2" journals, much smaller than FE journals.

In reality, you can build a 460cid small block with better breathing heads that will out power an FE.