God willing, I am planning on keeping my Mustang for a very long long time....
and I do take care of my car...but I wonder how available the 289 or 302 will be 20 years from now. I can only suspect it might get harder and harder to find them in the years to come.
Any thoughts on that ?
I suspect that if demand stays consistent while the supply shrinks, someone may start making reproductions. There are perhaps millions of 302-equipped Fords in existence and maybe even more engines, so I dont see it being a problem for an extremely long time. Like hungrtmonkey said, even 40 years later its fairly easy to find a 289 with life left in it. 302s enjoyed a 30 year production run, 289s only about 4.
Also, there are still new blocks floating around despite being out of production since about '01 or '02. I have one.
I suspect that someone (most likely Ford) will keep making most components for a long while as the windsor series has been the workhorse V8 in lots of different applications including collectable, cheap performance cars for so long that there is going to be a good market for parts for them for a long time.
I think people are still going to want parts for the classic mustangs in 20 years time let along 70s and 80s.
Plus there are probably more Ford V8s out there than any other V8.