There are 4 things stopping cheap and regular build-ups of those SU intake manifolds like they didn in the 70's.
Health, Safety, Environment and resultant cost of Over Heads. The west in general, and Australia and America in particualr, make you show a social conscience with your company cheque book.
In the developong nations like China, Tiwan and Korea, they can potentially sleep under the production line and expect less than 3 bowls of rice a day and still pay nothing for the Health, Safety, Environment and resultant cost of Over Heads.
Basically, an Aussie market of 23 million people has a focus on maybee less than 40 potential customers per year. In America, there are only about 50 2V heads (23 were noted in a sumary of a 12 month post back in 2003), and my guesstimate is that less than 1 in 10 in America want to pay for the intendent cost SU intake manifolds, carb set up, and the basic work involved. A reality of the economics of doing sixes.
SU carbs of the later HIF 38S, HIF 44, HIF 6 and HIF 7 type are simply the best carb you can buy for low end torque from 1500 to 3500 rpm, and have a heat adjustment strip which allows for the heat soak. Stock, they flow between 175 cfm and 240 cfm at 1.5" Hg, respectively. Three of them are enough to give 215 hp on a modified 200 I6, and the Aussie lads with 202 Holden L6's have seen well over 245 hp with a set of junk carbs.
In the old days before oxygen sensors, they were hard to set-up because of heat soak and needle and jet variations. These days, they are easier to tune than ever before. They have superior low speed characteristics becasue the spring and dashpot set-up produces its own defacto acclerator pump. There is a delay as the dashpot opens, which ricens the air/fuel ratio. The SU carb in fact has a better accelerator pump than any carb or EFI system ever made, and its proven when they are placed on dyno tests time and time again. EFI systems and Weber tripple carbs are constrained by packaging limits, which cause compromses with intake runner volume and packaging in our X-sheel Falcons, Mustangs, Mavericks, Granada and Cometes etc. SU's work well with all types of intake designs, Redline, Lynx, Blattman, whatever you find, it'll work perfectly.
As long as you run a good Redline or Lynx linkage, and a fuel regulator to limit pressure to 3.5 psi maximum, use the recomemded jets and dashpot springs, there is no reason why you'd ever be sorry for running them. And old ladies and tough guys go weak at the knees when you open the hood, or the throttle!
