By "lighter", do you mean less loss?
Also remember today's engines are more effiecient. Even my partially "old school" 5.9 makes net HP numbers somewhere between a 74 400 and 440! With the same 8.2-ish comp ratio!
I've always said a complrably equipped 383 can pretty much always take a 396, those 13 cubes be damned!
(19 if it's really a 402- and WTF is that marketing/badging all about?)
It's simply a better design.
Isn't the 396 one of those motors that was designed as a truck motor (348, 361, 390, etc)? While the 383 was a pass car (and even HP pass car) from the start.
