LOL, I've worked with engineers and machinists from that era back in the 80's. I know fine work when I see it and those Merlins were fine. There were damned few cars then made to the same standards but you can compare a period Rolls to a period Ford any time you want.
Or perhaps some time you can talk with someone who has had a period BMW, Daimler or Merlin apart, seen the craft work and put micrometers and verniers on the actual pieces instead of comparing apples to oranges on a juice-squeezed basis.
The switch to jets is simple. Props lose thrust with increased speed and jets don't. Props start to become brakes around .7 Mach. That's why 50's-modern fighters went to jet power.
As to comparing a 300HP IC engine to a 1200-2000+ HP engine as to redline and power to weight, that is a poor comparison. Or even comparing car motors that when something goes wrong you pull over to the side of the road to AC engines that have to be more reliable, just go ahead but don't expect me to take you seriously because I know better.
Small engines can run much faster than larger engines and they generally need to. The less power you output, the more efficient you can make the engine as well. As you increase size your weight and volumes increase by cubes while load-bearing cross sections are 2D, the strength increases by the square only. It is straight physics that says the smaller can be stronger and faster, it is technology that says how small you can build well. An ant can lift many times it's own weight so that makes humans uselessly weak??
Yes they can and do make finer IC engines nowadays. Pretty much all of them much smaller and gawdawful expensive.
Using the word CRUDE to describe the better engines of those days is an insult to the people who designed and built them. Like I wrote above, you want CRUDE then go look at a 1915 AC engine because those things fit the word without any comparisons needed at all.
I'll just wait till Crumpp weighs in since he has been hands-on with the hardware and seems to know some things about machining as well.
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