Well for my part Chilly, I love the fact that AFR is at least trying to service the SBF/BBF field with this offering. No-doubt that AFR is scanning the Ford forums to gauge interest in the Ford community.
However, i believe that since AFR like all of the other companies that have made the bulk of their profits off of chevrolet heads attract, or at least, are staffed by chevrolet fans, that will not design truly competitive heads for the BBF. Not from hate, IMHO, but from lack of understanding of what we are looking for in the 385 world.
This has been evident in at least two cases recently in my opinion. I.E. the Edelbrock heads and of course, the "pro comp" heads. Now, I am sure that the Edelbrocks and, the procomp heads (to an even lesser extent ) have their fans and can make some good power, but...They seem to have been designed by persons not very well acquainted to the 385's design.
I would like to see good inexpensive cast iron/aluminum heads for the 385, that flow well enough for the general 385 crowd but not exactly the race community. They don't have to be A460's in scope, but, they do have to flow better than P.I. heads etc. out of the box.
The procomps at first, looked like what i envisioned, but, they rapidly turned out to be mus-designed by some one that didn't exactly know what they where doing. Maybe they did, but they wanted to avoid a lawsuit with TFS. Who knows?
The 385 needs all of the heads that we can get so, these AFR's are appreciated, as are the flawed procomps and, the Edelbrocks etc.
What we really need are intake manifolds in more configurations as well as better heads.