Advantages of a stroker for daily driver
Personally I prefer the higher torque of a stroker in a daily driver combined with taller gears (3.23's for example) so the engine isn't screamin down the hwy. Piston speed and side wall loading is higher on a stroker so naturally it's not going to last as long as a short stroke engine but if you run taller gears the lower rpm's down the hwy. can balance out against the 360 and it'll last a nice long life. If you will be putting a lot of miles on it stay with the 360 but if you don't put many miles on it a stroker will do you good. As far as fuel mileage it's all in the combination. I recently took out a mild 360 and put a mild stroker in my Cuda and noticed no change at all in fuel mileage and the stroker isn't even broke in but the best part is the 360 had to have 93 octane to keep it happy but the stroker I built runs fine with no spark knock on 87 octane so in the long run it's a lot cheaper to operate. Plus the power is a lot better.
I agree, if you have the extra funds and want to build a car that will perform nicely on the street (some strip) and get mileage, go with the stroker (maybe even a stroked 318 ) and use an overdrive trans with 3.23's or even 3.00's.
A friend of mine built a 454 up and stuck it in a late 70's Chevy van mounted just behind the seats. It would eat anything that pulled up next to it, but it also got almost 20 mpg. He built it for one reason, to pull his boats and to get descent mileage doing it, you just need to do your homework on what parts to use to achieve the performance you want out of it. The only reason he moved the engine back in the van was to get good traction on the boat ramps.
80,000 miles out of an engine is really bad.
I also agree, 80,000 is not good if the engine was built correctly and set up for the street.
You can't throw big duration, high compression, and a big carb, on a street engine and get what you're after, it's also not needed to run good at the track either, you may not do a 10 sec 1/4 mile, but it will perform better than most on the road, look at all the pro touring cars.