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Back when I worked for Saab in the '80s they would give us service reps test cars as our company cars..I picked mine up in Houston and found out it was a camless engine with electromagnetic valves. It was the standard Saab engine otherwise..2 liter 4cyl 4valve/cylinder turbocharged. Some joker had also installed an ejector handle from a Saab jet (the Viggen) in the console.

The car had an automatic transmission, and when I pulled onto the loop in Houston I punched it and it took off like a rocket and when it shifted into second gear it spun the front tires (front wheel drive) and I went off the road into a culvert..luckily I didn't wreck the damn thing... it scared the hell out of me.

Turns out that not only did you gain horsepower from no cams, but the valve timing was adjusting itselt to the rpms...so you didn't have any valve float..and thus the power curve wasn't a curve at all, it was a straight line.

The performance was incredible, I couldn't understand why they didn't implement it, I never had any problems the 2 months I had the car, and I drove the fool out of it. I never topped it out, but I got it up to 135mph on Andrews Highway outside of Midland and it still had more to give.

The other really cool thing it had was a solor cell built into the rear window that would drive a cooling fan that vented hot air out of the car when it was parked. In those hot west Texas days I could get in the car and it would be nice and pleasant inside instead of blistering hot..I thought it was a great idea.

I'm sure what you experienced was more to do with the turbo boost than valves. Valve timing makes a difference in power and economy, but so does 10lbs of turbo boost. If you search my posts under alcohol fuel, you may see where I have stated several times the loss in economy of ethanol engines could be more than made up in compression ratio's and turbo boost. Converting to ethanol fuel should require a 30lbs turbo boost and 11:1 pistons at a minimum. It will run without it, but you lose efficiency. Ethanol won't ping except under the most dire environment. Dragsters can burn a piston, but they also produce 2000 hp. Flex fuel is just a stop gap measure until we get serious about ethanol. I could take the same 2 liter 4 banger an get 400hp easy to pull a full size truck. When you don't need 400hp, you should get 4-6cyl economy.

If I was guaranteed a steady supply of E85, I would convert in a heartbeat. But once you convert, you can't burn gas, unless you can find 110-120 octane.