Heh, if you allow - a slightly political (but in historical context) joke:
Try living right next to the big state (you know which one I mean) ; thus, it is only smart for Finns to build fast cars, should the need arise to run fast.
But your observation applies to all Scandinavian countries. Drag racing has been and is quite popular here. Cold long winters provide us with plenty of spare time, and the summer is so short that it makes sense to go the 1/4 quickly - to allow more runs.
But in regards to the original topic, the Holley 950 did work, and the engine was a 12.5 CR alu-rod based on a crate LS-6 (although we only used the block and head castings) and the camshaft was a VERY aggressive mechanical roller, intake lift .750" ex .731".
Tuning the ECU - hmm - I'd say on scale of 1-5 it would be a strong 4. You could get just about anything necessary done, but somehow the software felt a little clumsy.
The 950 we used was a model specifically meant for "cobbled up" EFI's such as ours. The Enderle throttle body is an actual 14-71 and the tunnel ram had injector bungs epoxied on. I think that the TPS we used was from a Cadillac (circa 90's) and a bunch of other stuff more or less collected from various sources.
An EFI system such as that provides absolutely scary throttle response. There is no way I could describe it well enough. In fact, it was almost undrivable because of the aggressiveness. When you open barn doors and inject fuel through 72 lbs injectors into an engine like that, exciting moments are bound to happen.
It was such a mad rush to drive, that I actually never had enough guts to really push it hard. I only managed to run a best of 11.672 out of 10 runs, and to be honest it was that slow only because I was scared to h@ll.
A friend with more experience in racing took it for a show run and went 10.90 with a full 1/4 mile of smoking rear tires. Although he races normally a HUGE BB Chevy with all the goodies and several hundred hp more, even he said that it was a particularly aggressive engine.
Heh, we even cut off the last 1500 rpm of the engine and had mechanically limited the throttles from opening all the way.
However, in terms of air flow the limited throttle opening did not really "limit" anything that much.
It was fun, but my taste regarding performance is well catered with only half of that power. Honestly.
Throttle response improvement CAN be very, very aggressive even in milder motors when going from carbs to efi.
MSquirt or a commercial product ? I think it really boils down to the extent of work and specifically time one is willing to put in. There are so many succcess stories regarding MS that it just has to be darn good for most if not practically all uses in the hobby dept.
But does it really compete with a commercial product ? Obviously in most cases it does, but the far-out guys might need stuff that's not yet included.
Personally I have become a bit more oriented towards buying a ready solution, but that's probably due to approaching middle age, losing hair and gaining weight. But knowledgeable friends have now for a very long time strongly recommended and used MS in quite diverse applications.
Regarding the EEC-IV in most Fords, I would be hard pressed to change into another solution before fully investigating what paths the EEC-IV - preferably in MAF form - would allow. Frankly, I think that it caters to all of my needs very well.
