Been a 'horsepower hunter' most of my motoring life, whether it was a 105E Anglia with so much skimmed off the head I had to put extra washers on the spark plugs to stop the pistons hitting them and pockets so deep in the pistons for the valves you could lose a small child in them
Your quote Dave reminds me of our first attempts at tuning a '55 100E, sidevalve
Can you imagine? Technology didn't come much simpler than it did in those days
Pic nicked from Google BTW