[Christ]

For most regrinds, even if you're lowering the lift, you're still going to change things like lobe separation angles and duration to get the most efficient cam you can... that said, you'll still need to have material added before you can change some of those parameters while keeping the cam's lift profile tame enough to not start loping when you're idling at 500 or less RPM (yea, you can make your engine idle that low w/ the right cams.)

In fact, the 225 inline 6 cylinder Chrysler engine was noted to have been able to idle at speeds less than 200 RPM, and has once been said to idle at 50 RPM without stalling, but no oil pump function could be recorded at speeds that low.

This would be another advantage of solenoid-based valve timing events, rather than a mechanical cam controlling them. You could have the computer controlled valves opening enough to keep the air flowing reliably into the cylinder at extremely low speeds, still maintaining enough power to counter-act the frictional losses of the engine, which would burn significantly less fuel than idling at 800-1000 RPM for the average engine. Even 600 RPM vs 100 RPM is no comparison in terms of fuel use.

Solenoid based valve action would also allow the engine to be infinitely tunable for it's specific displacement, meaning that after all tuning took place, the engine's only weak point really would be it's displacement in terms of going further for FE or Power.