I had a car long time ago with the same symptons. Problem was the timing belt lost a few notches and slipped a little bit so the timing went to hell.

There is a guy on the radio here who owns a car shop and on his weekly show he offered anyone to call him or email him and he can look up if a certain model engine has valve interference or not. That would be a useful reference

And yes, those boston guys should know better. I hardly ever catch them in a mistake. I bet they were mentioning a specific model.

Cheers.