Indholdsfortegnelse for October 2007 i Hot Rod

LIFE AT THE SIDE OF THE ROAD As a driver of junk, I’ve spent a lot of time stranded. Come to think of it, as a driver of spankin’ fresh project cars, I’ve also done my time. I think it’s the rodder’s fate. When I was a teen, my dad just sat with the station wagon running anytime I left the house, because he was going to have to come rescue me sooner than later. It was a good thing we had Olds 403 power in his ’79 Pontiac wagon, ’cause it pulled my Super Bee home on a chain weekend after weekend—sometimes for 10 or 15 miles at a whack. He even had to drag me back from my first date. I later got the Pontiac as a hand-me-down…

ONE OF THE LAST PLACES I can’t express in words how blown away I was when I opened the Aug. ’07 issue and saw the article on the hot Bug scene on page 84 (“Small and Mighty”). Ironically, it was just a couple of days prior that I inherited a ’66 VW Beetle from my best friend Andrew Sherlock, who passed away at the way-too-young age of 35 after a five-year battle with brain cancer. As a reader and subscriber for many years, HOT ROD was probably one of the last places I would have expected to see an article on air-cooled VWs. Being more of an American musclecar enthusiast than a Beetle fan, I was thrilled to see that these unique cars can gain acceptance in the V-8 world,…

FORD’S MAGICAL MYSTERY MOTOR We found this engine hiding in plain sight at a recent NMRA event in Milan, Michigan. It was nestled in the engine bay of Don Bowles’ “Coal Digger” Mustang, which runs out of the drag race shop at Roush Industries in nearby Livonia. We’d like to tell you we’ve uncovered a huge scoop here, but to be perfectly truthful the Roush rig was parked directly across from the Ford media tent all weekend. Clearly we were meant to see it. Also, note the “Experimental” spelled out in tall lettering on both sides of the engine’s airbox, just to make sure that no journalists stumbling past on their way to the buffet tables could miss it. So what is this thing exactly? When asked, sources at both…

THE BURIED BELVEDERE Of all the cars in our survivor series in this issue [page 40), this one probably deserves the title the most. Sure, it only has 6 miles on it and is by far in the worst condition of any of the featured cars, but it’s remarkable that it even exists considering it spent the past 50 years buried underground in a leaky time capsule. If you don’t know the story, back in 1957 during the Golden Jubilee Week celebrating Oklahoma’s semicentennial, a brandnew Desert Gold Poly and Sand Dune White ’57 Plymouth Belvedere Sport Coupe was lowered into a concrete vault and buried in the front lawn of the Tulsa County Courthouse along with another, smaller time capsule inside a welded-up boiler tank. The plan was to…

Fate and luck: They determine which cars somehow manage to survive to the present day just as much as fame, historical importance, or commercial value. This Model A, virtually unknown until now but a true slice of hot rod Americana just the same, belongs to Dennis Sisco of West Branch, Michigan. The retired Detroit-area radio broadcaster recently purchased it from his rodding buddy Dave Crain, who found the car in 2005. It was resting on its framerails under a carport where it had been left to rot sometime in the late ’60s. While the harsh Detroit winters have not been kind to the ’31 Ford roadster, Dennis intends to restore the car to its original state if he can. Their research has uncovered the following. The rod was originally built…

In the mid-’70s, Car Craft came up with the idea of resurrecting basic $400 junkyard musclecar bodies to build what it called a “contemporary all-American GT.” (Think of it as early Pro Touring.) With the assistance of his brother Steve, Al Kirschenbaum, a Brooklyn, New York native (and Petersen employee),built the Mopar, a ’70 Plymouth Cuda, “East Coast style.” It was paired against a California-style ’67 Camaro put together by Norm Mayersohn. The Mopar received a 360 small-block, a 727 Torque-Flite, and 2.93:1,8 3/4-inch Sure Grip rearend, plus suspension enhancements. It ran in the July, Aug., Sept., and Oct. ’76 issues of Car Craft before finally being (more or less) wrapped up in the Sept. ’76 edition. Still owned today by Al, the car remained a daily driver through the…

The OE automakers have used high-profile show cars for years as a way to attract attention to their brand. Though never destined for production, these one-offs suck people into the new-car displays and, hopefully, leave them with a good impression of the latest new cars. Back in 1966, Plymouth’s exhibit folks worked with the styling department to pen a relatively subdued (for the day) but still hot-looking version of their new Barracuda for the show circuit. Rather than build it themselves, they enlisted the famous Alexander Brothers, Larry and Mike, and had the car built at the brothers’ Detroit-area shop. The guys did a lot of metalwork to the car, including enlarging the rear wheelwells, adding a custom side exhaust that dumps in front of the rear tires, rounding all…

“I don’t really own this car. It will always be the Williams Brothers car. I’m simply the caretaker for now.” That’s Tom McIntyre describing his stewardship of the most unbelievable barn find we’ve seen in a long time. Tom’s incredible collection includes such drool-inducing rods as the Penske/Donahue ’68 Camaro Trans Am race car, the Mickey Thompson-built, Junior Johnson-driven ’63 Corvette that was the very first vehicle to get Chevy’s NASCAR Mystery Motor, and much more. But as good as those cars are, our favorite is the Williams Brothers Model A. The car appeared in the Dec. ’54 HOT ROD after it had destroyed the B/Roadster record at Bonneville with a speed of 159 mph—coincidentally the same number painted on the car. It also did some drag racing and hill…

Before Funny Cars, there were Gas Coupes and Sedans. From the early ’50s till the mid-’60s, their popularity rivaled—and, in some regions of the country, actually exceeded—that of Top Fuel dragsters and AA/Fuel Altereds. No form of race car before or since the Gasser era has so closely related to fans’ own street cars or so influenced our customizing tastes, right up to the present. The nickname “Gassers” derived from Gas Coupe and Sedan classes contested weekly at virtually every dragstrip in America. The roots run even deeper than the sport itself, which wasn’t formally organized until July 1950 (Santa Ana Drags). Because drag racing evolved from dry lakes racing, its original classes were loosely based on rules developed by lakes racers in the ’30s and ’40s. Initial classifications merely…

Next year we’re doing the exact same thing. Not a single rule change. Same time (Saturday, May 10), same place (Memphis Motorsports Park), same title sponsors (Comp Cams and Rockett Brand Fuels). We clarify that now because, despite talk of a premature death, the ’07 HOT ROD Pump Gas Drags(tm) once again proved itself unmatched for grandstand-shakin’ thunder and drama on Rockett Brand 93-octane gas. It was a saga of firsts and upsets. Firsts. The Pump Gas Drags(tm) maintained its four-year streak as an invitational, with every racer handpicked by the HOT ROD staff, but this was the first time we invited a full 75 cars rather than 50, with no alternates: If the junk showed up, then it dragged, vying for a 32-car field based on a single round…

“There’s no replacement for displacement,” is the well-worn mantra of anyone installing a 383 stroker kit in a small-block Chevy or trying to squeeze an extra 0.010 inch of overbore in a set of cylinders that have already been cut too thin. That’s because we all know one of the easiest, most efficient ways to make power is by adding cubic inches. But compared to engine builder Gene Fulton, owner of Fulton Racing Engines (FRE),we’re all just dipping our toes into the shallow end of the displacement pool. Finding an extra 20 inches or so with a stroker crank is nice, but Fulton is one of the few engine builders on the planet taking the search for size to the extreme. His newest package—utilizing 4.800-inch pistons on an amazing 6.00-inch…

Freiburger struck a chord with his July ’07 Starting Line column on Commuter Rods, cool daily drivers that laugh in the face of gas prices. He put out a request for readers to send us in photos and information on their daily-driver hot rods, and you responded in droves. The following are some of the more interesting cars and stories that we’ve received, all of them true daily drivers that have way more character than a new minivan or economy car. Hopefully these stories will inspire others to save old iron from going to the scrapyard and put more interesting cars on the streets instead of just banal new economy cars. THE FALCON PROJECT Just over three years ago I was faced with needing a commuter car. When I saw…

NEWVISTAS AHEAD With the introduction of Windows Vista, Microsoft’s all-new personal computer operating system, the PC world is in the midst of the biggest transformation since Windows 95. The latest version of Windows is far more than just another incremental upgrade; it’s such a radical departure from what has come before that some legacy software may not run properly. What’s this got to do with car guys? In the hot rod world, various performance simulators and aftermarket EFI tuning programs could potentially be affected. Most consumer-level PCs now come preloaded with Vista, so we queried some leading aftermarket automotive software vendors about their Vista support plans. It appears that the software from ACCEL/DFI CalMap [version 6 or later), Electromotive, and FAST’s C-Com and XFI [version 1.331 or higher) all work,…

Call ’em barn finds. Call ’em survivors. Whatever, we just refer to the vehicles shown on the next 16 pages as bitchin’ hot rods, finally dug out of obscurity for at least enough time to capture them in full photographic glory. Some of them are true barn finds, unearthed after decades of neglect and outright memory loss. Others are still in the care of their original owners or builders but haven’t seen the light of day for years. Some are historical, others simply have great sentimental value, a few are running in anger like they used to, and others may never turn a tire under their own power again, but the overall connection is that they are all cool. We hope you enjoy them, and we encourage readers to send…

Our friend Steve Atwell is a world-renowned Hemi race-car guy, but in his midlife crisis he’s starting to expand his horizons. We guess his new Prudhomme ’70 Cuda Funny Car is technically a Hemi car, but he also just bought a Ford lightweight. And even though Steve is technically a Dodge guy, he hasn’t been able to pass up a few good Plymouths that came his way. One of them is this interesting Superbird. When Steve got the call that there was a ’Bird up in Lansing, Michigan, that had been in a garage since 1976, he thought he probably needed it—but knew for sure when he found out it was a 440+6 car with a Pistol Grip four-speed and the Super Track Pak option. The owner had picked it…

How many of you love the psychedelic vibe and how many are glad it went away? Freiburger is convinced that the ’70s look is coming back, and based on the reaction to Mike Formick’s ’67 Camaro on this year’s Power Tour(r), he might be right. Mike’s car is no pseudo-retro job—it’s the real deal. Those lace stripes were shot in the early ’70s by the car’s original owner, and everything else on the car—except the drivetrain—is just like it was when the car was street-raced three decades ago. The RS/SS 350ci, four-speed car was “a bit of a legend in our town,” says Mike, who lives in Streetsboro, Ohio. The Camaro went through two owners before being stuffed in a barn. When it became available, Mike was in the right…

Mike Volz of Olympia, Washington, made the discovery of a lifetime by following leads about “some old Mopar station wagon race car.” The mystery wagon turned out to be one of only three factory-built Max Wedge station wagons sold in 1963 (two Plymouths, one Dodge). Amazingly, the plussize body style was what spooked everybody else away. Originally equipped with a low-compression 11.0:1 426 Max Wedge, pushbutton 727 TorqueFlite, AM radio, heater, and steel front end, this six-passenger Belvedere long-roof was originally sold new by the legendary Milne Brothers Chrysler Plymouth of Pasadena, California, to a young racer by the name of Ron Mandella. Though Ron recently passed away, his brother Phil Mandella—proprietor of PM Race Cars—says Ron campaigned it extensively in NHRA A/SA competition, winning the Indy Nationals in 1964…

“All the nuts and bolts are the same,” says Budd Davisson. “Flying is just hot rodding with a third dimension added.” Today Budd is a top aviation writer and photographer who has flown nearly every interesting aircraft in existence and an accomplished novelist as well. But as a teenager in the ’50s, he did some of his first flying on the ground—with a Flathead V-8-powered Model A roadster he built himself, starting the project when he was just 15. When he took to the skies his hot rod remained behind, stowed away in the family workshop for over four decades. Now after all these years he has revisited his rod and is prepping it for a return flight, using many of the very same tools that he first used to…

Can you picture a race where top IndyCar drivers competed on a road course in early Ford highboys? It took place in 1934, and HOT ROD magazine covered it 17 years later. A photograph on HRM’s Mar. ’51 cover showed a line of stripped-down, early-’30s roadsters parading up Broadway in Los Angeles. The cars, mostly Fords with a few other makes thrown in, were promoting the ’34 Gilmore Gold Cup races. The drivers, Indy 500 hotshots like Rex Mays, Louie Meyer, Fred Frame, Kelly Petillo, Pete DePaolo, Wilbur Shaw, and Ted Horn, were the cream of the AAA racing community. In the midst of the Great Depression “real” race cars were prohibitively expensive, and newmodel sales had stalled. The Gold Cup races let fans see the nation’s top circle-track drivers…

LS BOLT-ONS PG.116 Starting with an iron-block LQ9 engine from a GM truck, we bolt on a better exhaust system, an oil pan, rockers, and an intake, then throw a tune-up in it and pick up 74 hp. 870CI ENGINE PG.126 doesn’t get much wilder than Gene Fulton’s 870ci Pro Mod engine. This thing has huge inches and a blimpload of nitrous in it, and it’s just the thing if wretched excess is your bag. S.Co.T. BLOWER PG.136 The famous S.Co.T. blower for flatheads is back with a bang. Make that a huff. Here’s why you’ll want one on your next flattie. TESTANDTUNE PG.152 Suspensions, radar detectors, tools, tubes, louvers, heads, and even an intercooler sprayer are included in this month’s Test and Tune. PIT STOP PG.158 Marlantells how to…

Power Tour ’07 is a wrap, but you’ll have to wait until next month to read about the 1,500 miles of vehicular mayhem and frivolity, weather that ranged from soggy and wet to muggy and hot, and everything in between. The evening stops were all killer, and we even got to rock the house with Blue Oyster Cult at the finale in Little Rock, Arkansas. As much work as Power Tour is for the HOT ROD staff, it’s still a blast to see old friends and catch up, as this event serves as many people’s annual vacation. As proof, this 4-4-2’s rear window decoration is not all that unusual in the Long Hauler parking area. Check it out in next month’s HOT ROD, but start planning now to bring your…

It’s early July in Southern California as we go to press with this issue, and it’s unseasonably hot here. But having lived and traveled around this country, we’re all well aware of how good we have it in California (with the weather anyway), as most parts of the U.S. add plenty of humidity to the heat. That tends to turn bench racing sessions into evening affairs, after the mercury has lowered, the cruising has stopped for the night, or fatigue has made the wrenches return to the toolbox. If you happen to be alone in the garage with no buddies around to swap stories and dreams with, break out a pen and paper or fire up the computer and consider us your late-night bench racing pen pal. Send your letters…

1957 DRIVING IN CIRCLES Oval-track racing predates HOT ROD by a wide margin. Indianapolis Motor Speedway was built in 1909, before the first 500 in 1911; that’s roughly 25 years before the first action on Southern California’s dry lakes and 39 years before our first issue. At one time or another, there have been over 100 racing venues within a day’s drive of the HOT ROD offices. The magazine’s first issue detailed the formation of the California Roadster Association (CRA) in 1946, but interestingly, HOT ROD virtually ignored the incredibly popular jalopy racing of the time (though it did build one jalopy as an early project car). HRM staffers attended circletrack races, and while some features on high-end cars made it to print, many photos went unused. Such is the…

THE CHARGER THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN If only these guys had been working within Chrysler’s design department a couple of years back. Rob Koeppel and his crew at Force Performance are going to do what nearly every purist has pondered since the release of the all-new Charger—hack off the rear doors. Oh, and also add two forms of forced induction to a 426ci new-gen Hemi to coax out a claimed 1,200 hp. In addition to the cut, the sheetmetal will get subtly flared fenders and an extended nose with a custom air dam and hoodscoop. For the power part, rather than battle the notoriously stubborn Chrysler engine management, the Indy-headed Hemi will use a FAST XFI system to dial in the Roots supercharger and twin turbos. See it come together…

This hot rod story tells itself: a classic ’32 highboy covered for 40 years while the kids grow up, tucked away in the back of the barn behind the old tractor and the primered ’34 sedan, concealed under an endless series of shrouds. Then one day you realize your boys aren’t boys anymore. They are men with their own families. With some coaxing from your lifelong friend Stretch and prodding by your sons Emmett and J.D., you’re convinced to fire up that Hemi one more time, “just to hear it run,” they say. But you know it means much more than that. Overnight the full-on thrash begins … and decades flash before your eyes. Standing in the pits after the car’s first quarter-mile pass in 40 years, Skip Kent’s youngest…

In 1974, Car Craft staffer Rick Voegelin built his Super Modified Camaro to back up the magazine’s editorial campaign for a head-sup Sportsman eliminator. Pro Modified, as CC called it, was to be a working man’s Pro Stock, racing at 10 pounds per cubic inch with unported cylinder heads, steel bodies, and 10.5-inch-wide tires to contain costs. NHRA bought the concept but not the eliminator, introducing the A/Super Modified class in Modified Eliminator at the start of the 1975 season. Originally thrown together in 30 days and mirroring the antiestablishment insouciance of its builder, Rick’s ’67 Camaro was the antithesis of the slick magazine project car. Never a threat for a Best Appearing award, it raced in primer and white gelcoat until a friend of a friend took pity and…

Stuntman and moviemaker Mike Kirton was approached by a wealthy farmer who wanted him to direct an infomercial and offered a Corvette in exchange for his services. The guy got the Vette in a trade 11 years earlier and stuck it in a storage container on the farm, having never even driven it, and couldn’t even remember what color it was or which of the 62 containers that littered his farm the car was stored in. Mike said, “Container number 32 was the lucky dog.” He unburied the 350/four-speed car, trailered it to a shop where it got a new brake caliper, a carb, and a battery, and it fired right up. Since then, Mike has added Vette Brakes suspension and is beating the snot out of the car. He…

We don’t have much background information on this last-minute entry, but that’s not a big deal because altered-wheelbase Funny Car fanatics and drag race historians alike will instantly recognize the man as Ford drag race legend Hubert Platt and the faded blue Falcon as his 1965 match racer, the Georgia Shaker III. Yes, “Hugh Baby” is alive and well and so is the former FX stormer, which was recently tugged from a barn by Tim Holland of Lawrenceville, Georgia. Steeped in drag racing history—and featured on the covers of the June ’65 issue of Super Stock & Drag Illustrated magazine and the Nov. ’65 issue of Drag Racing magazine—Hubert’s altered-wheelbase Funny Falcon was a solid 9.90/140-mph performer in its day and made life very difficult for the Mopar factory Hemi…

“It’s amazingly well mannered on the street for a 700hp road-race-prepped Hemi.”—Ramin Younessi If you’ve ever had the opportunity to drive one like it was intended to be driven, it’s easy to understand the appeal of a well-tuned Porscheor M-series BMW. As a lad Ramin Younessi spent many hours helping his father in the family repair shop elbow-deep in German grease, so of course his initial fasci nation revolved around those drivers’ cars. When he reached high school and college, Ramin continued his love affair with European cars and motorcycles, but amid the swirling tarn of teenage testosterone he was quickly becoming more and more fascinated by the imposing presence and power of musclecars Eventually he caved and picked up a nitrous-fed’77 Trans Am, and immediately realized what he d…

General Motors’ LS-series smallblock engines have been in production for over a decade, but it’s only been within the last few years that they have really hit critical mass among average hot rodders, who are now finding them to respond superlatively to traditional hot rod power adders. One engine builder that’s jumped on the LS bandwagon is Duttweiler Performance, renowned for its hard-running, high-tech, EFI turbo Buick V-6 and classic Chevy V-8 engines. When HOT ROD decided to evaluate the current state of bolton LS hop-ups, Duttweiler was our first choice. Its sophisticated Froude F24 dyno controlled by state-of-the-art Digalog Benchmark software enables true wideband pulls, so the facility provided the perfect opportunity for evaluating a late-model engine under simulated street-driving conditions—and proprietor Ken Duttweiler is totally at home with…

HOT ROD TELEVISION AND THE RED ROCKER Sammy Hagar is leaving his home and the warm climate and sunny beaches of Baja California, Mexico, to team up with Gateway Classic Mustangs (St. Louis, Missouri) and build his dream car, a ’67 Mustang called the GCM-R, and you can watch the drama on HOT ROD TV’s August 27 and September 18 broadcasts. Plus we are broadcasting the best shows from all season through October 5 with ESPN2. Note the schedule below for air dates and scheduled times. Many thanks to our sponsors for their support, including our presenting sponsor, Mothers Polishes Waxes Cleaners. All times subject to change. Check your local listings for updates and additional broadcasts. BACKTO SCHOOL Recently we joined Summit Racing and Ford Racing Performance Parts, both sponsors…