Here's Ferguson's web site; http://www.ardun.com/

If you can get it down your way, you may want to get a copy of The Rodder's Journal #25, they have an excellent article on the history of the Ardun. Like Richard, I had long heard the story about the heads being originally developed to increase horsepower for commercial uses. However, there's a new biography out on Zora Arkus-Duntov wherein his lead designer states that their original purpose was for racing and high performance road use. The supposition is that, due to cost, they only had limited success in that market and that the commercial uses became the default market.

To give you an idea of why these puppies are so expensive, there weren't very many sets produced. (current price for originals is $18-20k) For many years it was believed only 225-250 sets were made. With this latest research and exhaustive examination of serial numbers it's now believed that 400 were produced. Still a small number. This, btw, is for the 85-100hp engines. Not known to many is that they also did heads for the smaller V8-60 enines. These were definately intended for performance as this was a very popular engine for midget racing. Best guess is that around 30 sets of these were made.

Amazingly, about 10 years ago I saw two sets of them here in the Seattle area, both owned by the same guy. He has a private museum of cars, mostly sports car stuff, and was having a showing for mostly non-car people. In the middle of all these various high performance sports machines, and Euro exotics, was a nice looking MG-TC that had a bit of a hot rod look to it. Fortunately the hood was open, and inside I saw an Ardun equipped flathead...........only smaller than I'd seen before! Pat happened by about that time and I asked him........"Is that a V8-60 with Ardun heads?". For just a second he looked taken aback. "You know what those are?". Obviously he hadn't expected any of these people he was buttering up for business to know ANYTHING about cars. He gets this big grin on his face, and with a bit of a hand motion he says, "Comeon, I've got somethin' to show you." We went back into his shop area, and in the corner was a wooden crate. Inside was another set of Ardun V8-60 heads! He also had two sets of the larger ones, but since I'd never seen the 60's before my total focus was on them. No, he didn't want to sell them. In fact, he said that Bill Smith, the owner of Speedway Motors and an avid vintage engine collector, had been hounding him for years, and offering obscene amounts of money.

One last note. Ferguson is apparently in the process of producing aluminum blocks and pans so you can really build a stout Ardun. Of course, it's probably a good guess that you'd be in it around $30k by the time you get done.