The external appearance of the early W2’s, in the area around the spark plugs, looked a lot more like a stock head.
I don’t know if these are crack prone or not.
The one that cracked on me was like the blue one.
I forget who told me but that casting above was based on OE core boxes. They didn’t break like that.
When they re-released the W2 head they used all new core boxes and they had issues, one of which (IIRC) was the dowel pin holes didn’t get drilled deep enough. It held the head up enough to break the corner off.