It comes down to availability. I have an lsvtec and it has over 35k miles on it, alot of hard miles too. I love that engine but I'd rather have a gsr block, but they are tough to find. For the price of a stock gsr block you could buy and build an ls block. So for the same money the lsvtec will be faster. As far as reliability I've personaly built several and all are still running to this day but I've also seen a few blow too, but I've also seen almost every Honda engine out there blow at some time or another.

So I guess my opinion is if you want to build a 1.8L and you are having a tough time finding a good b18c block go for an ls block but do it right.