Not sure what you're saying. The F-1 engine is easily beaten by many engines that exist today. It was not a very high efficiency engine at all.
It's true that in the end we may get there the long way, N1-style, but we still didn't.
Also the arguments about not having heavy rockets has nothing to do with engines, it's either "we don't need them" or "just use propellant depots". Without certain Alabama senator even SLS would be probably dead already. Big rockets are only useful when you sacrifice performance for reuse AND have enough payloads to maintain good flightrate.