It won WW II in a few hundred thousand Chevy trucks, and the basic design lasted from the late 1920's to the mid-1950's in untold numbers of cars and trucks that got people to work and back and traveled all over the world. A lot of people are simply too ignorant or lazy to keep one running right, so they swap for a different engine, not necessarily a "better" one. There's nothing wrong with a 216 that can't be fixed by someone with more than half a dozen brain cells to rub together.
Jerry
