Depends, there's a ton of late 70's large cubic engines that would get smoked by a modern NA 4 cylinder.
There's built 340's that can smoke built 408's, it mainly comes down to heads, valve train, stall and gears, but yes displacement usually makes it easier to accomplish performance goals.
But there's also a ton of high hp ford 4.6l 289/302 and chevy ls 4.8l no reason a 273 can't be built up relatively as easy. For most people once you got to turn over 6000 rpm and a fewer 7000 rpm you've hit your engines power limit and need more displacement or power adders to reach your hp goals. That would be about 350-400 hp for a 273.
