Innehållsförteckning för August 2015 från Hot Rod

As you flip through the pages of this magazine, you’ll see examples of everything from homegrown innovation to cost-is-no-object showmanship. Both ends of the spectrum can inspire, especially when mixed with the familiarity of cars you own or grew up with. Brewing this monthly cocktail of technology and emotion can make for a complicated experience. Of all the magazines I’ve ever worked on, HOT ROD is the most intricate. That’s not a criticism—it’s a reality that comes from 67 years of legendary people, accomplishments, and innovations that we attempt to celebrate properly every 28 days. I think anything new and interesting begins with a complicated origin. Complicated is the term I use to describe a framework (parts, technologies, or processes) that excite us, while still surrounded…

Let’s agree that the Ford GT is one of the most significant cars from an enthusiasts’ perspective to come from any car company in decades. Which is why HOT ROD met up with the majority of the Ford GT team in Dearborn, Michigan, at Ford’s engineering headquarters. We were given an exclusive look at the GT, and an exclusive interview with the staff, focusing mainly on the process of creating a supercar like this. We wanted to know how Ford launches a program as complicated, aero intensive, and innovative as the GT and 13 months later ends up with the car in these images—production ready, with fairly solid rumors this represents the street version of what will be raced at Le Mans in 2016. Ford had to create two cars:…

Tom Bailey’s goal is to go fast and quick—and do it in a street-legal 1969 Camaro—or, at least, a reasonable facsimile of one. That’s the goal; this is what he’s constructed to make that goal a reality. Bailey’s Camaro landed at the 2015 Detroit Autorama, and we got the firsthand particulars of how this goal materialized. After winning HOT ROD’s 2013 Drag Week™, Bailey decided he would like a 1969 Camaro that could participate in more than just one event a year. He wanted a car he could race in Pro Mod, but one that was also street-legal and would satisfy all of the parameters to still participate in Drag Week™. Bailey commissioned Keith Engling at Skinny Kid Race Cars (SkinnyKidRaceCars.com) in Commerce, Michigan, to handle the tube chassis. The…

Most automotive matchups take place on the track, and this one is no exception—only we’re not the kind of people who have “trackday-only” cars. We want to be able to drive everything everywhere, so rather than make a few laps and declare a victor, we spent a solid month driving these two supercharged Corvette options around town. We commuted—650 horses at idle in LA traffic—we ran errands, we road-tripped, we dyno-tested, and of course, we raced. Now we’ll lay it out there and let you pick a winner. 2015 CORVETTE Z06 Warning: The 2015 Corvette Z06 will make you a bad person. At first, we thought it was just us, already prone to excessive street speed and impatience in traffic. When we mentioned it to fellow staffer Brandan Gillogly—as we…

Mike would always tease me that my predilection for Dodges was holding me back. He was a Chevy guy for sure, built Camaros in the Van Nuys plant, ran Bow Tie parts out in Nevada. Mike worked for GM from 1964 to 2004, with a short break around 1966 for a military “vacation.” In 2008 he bought a brand-new Z51 Corvette. He wanted a Z06, but you couldn’t get an automatic, and the loss of a leg in Vietnam made clutch work difficult in a daily driver. I got to drive the Vette soon after its purchase, the first brand-new car I ever piloted. We planned to race it against my Challenger, but he was gone before we got the chance. After his death, Mike’s Corvette sat in…

The Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber used during WWII is small by contemporary air-travel standards, yet its presence commands more space than any Airbus. Its long, thin wings stretch across the runway like it owns not just the taxiway but the entire airport. Oil drools down the propellers and pools under each of the four radial engines. A small group of airmen scurry around beneath the open bomber doors and rosette window cockpit to clean the airframe affectionately—as if it weren’t a monster capable of leveling a city with a single payload. It’s not so easy to keep a B-29 in flying order. The original Curtiss-Wright R-3350 engines were 1940s-era turbo/supercharged radials, and finding components to repair them is a fulltime job. “In 2006 we had just overhauled our last serviceable…

The hot rod fraternity is ruled by speed. It’s our rush, our passion. Horsepower is the means to attain it, but speed is what we’re after. So how appropriate is it that a museum has been built to celebrate speed? The World of Speed (WorldofSpeed.org) in Wilsonville, Oregon, just a 20-minute ride from Portland (unless you speed, then it’s less) is a celebration of the many ways we pursue speed. It’s an 80,000-square-foot facility housing virtually all forms of racing, from cars to motorcycles to planes to boats. Sure, there are museums displaying NASCAR or drag-racing exhibits, but the World of Speed is much more. It’s an education facility with two state-of-the-art classrooms and a full-service shop to give students of speed hands-on experience at working on race cars. A…

As HOT ROD celebrated its 20th Power Tour® in 2014 with unprecedented growth and participation, we were also excited with the unveiling of the new HOT ROD–licensed Camaro built by Nickey Chicago and sold by Todd Wenzel Chevrolet. The Nickey Performance name was recently revitalized by Stefano Bimbi after being dormant for many years. The Nickey Chevrolet dealership was famous for building Camaros, Chevelles, and Novas in the late-1960s and into the 1970s, performing 427ci engine swaps along with a few other performance and appearance mods, transforming them into street and strip beasts. To commemorate 67 years of HOT ROD, Todd Wenzel Chevrolet teamed up with Nickey Chicago, Inc. to build 67 HOT ROD Camaros, custom-built to suit a customer’s preference of select options based on the 1LE Performance Package…

Racing has always been a heavy influence of street tastes, with builders taking inspiration from even such extreme race machines as Funny Cars in the late-1960s. Not only did Gary Kessler’s Deuce highboy from St. Louis run wheels and tires from a local Funny Car, it also ran Logghe Funny Car coilovers in the rear, creating a street runnin’ Funny Car roadster of sorts. Looks, trends, and even components used throughout the history of hot rodding on the street have usually come from some form of racing. In the 1940s, stripped-down roadsters and coupes emulated their almost identical-looking lakes and circle-track brethren. In the 1950s, it was IndyCar racing that brought about “bigs” and “littles” for tires, and the use of magnesium and aluminum for things like wheels, quick-change rears,…

Anyone who’s been around me for a while, or who’s seen my videos, knows that I jokingly and ironically refer to people’s cars as “junk” or “garbage.” Drag Week’s Larry Larson hated me for it when we first met; I said something like, “Larry, get your junk to the staging lanes,” referring to his now legendary Chevy II, and he didn’t realize that “junk” was a universal term of endearment. An easy mistake, as I also use “junk” and “garbage” to mean junk and garbage. “Trash” also comes into play, but doesn’t have the same panache, and is used rarely enough that we won’t muddy the discussion with it here. You see, there’s nuance to this lexicon. Let’s say we’re talking about an el cheapo ratchet…

Tom Bailey, his intrepid Sick Seconds 1969 Camaro, and his Drag Week™ exploits have been depicted in HOT ROD in myriad action shots throughout the years. This action shot is from the 2012 Drag Week™. The exploit depicted is receipt of a ticket from Johnny Law for rolling through a stop sign. After munching rocker arms and frying the car’s ignition, which put him out of competition, he decided to continue the trek to Tulsa for one glory pass of 6.94 in the quarter-mile. Of course, returning for the 2013 Drag Week™, he won the event and grabbed the first 6-second weekly average for Drag Week™—and abided by both the Drag Week™ rules and all traffic laws.…

A gentleman emailed me to say that if I ended up in Missouri he would show me some hidden gems. When I got there, he said we’d be going to a rock quarry. That was definitely something new for this barn finder! The quarry owners said the rock that used to be mined out of there was used to make many of the important buildings in the state capital. After demand fell for that particular stone, they turned it into a junkyard. On the main road, there was a 1969 Pontiac Firebird convertible, 1930s and 1940s Fords, a 1965 Plymouth Barracuda, and a 1972 Chevelle. Further into the yard, there was quite the collection of AMC vehicles, including an AMX and a Pierre Cardin Javelin. Nearby was a rare 1968…

Without a doubt, 2014 was a year of unprecedented enthusiasm surrounding the Ford Mustang. It marked the ponycar’s 50th anniversary— with various celebrations and remembrances nationwide— and heralded the rollout of an all-new 2015 Mustang that promises to be among the best heretofore. While focusing on the Mustang’s bright spots, little attention was paid to the 1974–1978 Mustang II, a car some consider a victim of its time. The Mustang II’s five-year run coincided with one of the darkest periods for domestic auto manufacturers, as they struggled with compelling new imports, air-pollution standards, and the oil embargo. Despite strong sales figures (which suggest the car was right for its time), the Mustang II remains largely unloved today— rarely subject to the attention slathered on every other Mustang generation. And yet…

We’re standing outside an industrial warehouse near the intersection of Edsel Ford and Chrysler freeways in Detroit, not far from GM’s Hamtramck Assembly Center. What few windows the building has have been draped in tarps and taped up from the inside. All the doors are locked tight. We really want to get in, not just because it’s 40-something degrees and raining, but because we know the Reliable transport truck parked outside has unloaded two 2016 Camaros, sans camouflage, and they’re waiting for us inside. While never a huge departure from the established ponycar class, each previous Camaro generation came as a completely different style. The second-generation Camaro was much more European than the first, and the third was far lighter and compact. From the spy photos we’d seen of the…

The fifth generation of the classic Chevy small-block V8 engine launched in GM’s 2014 fullsize trucks and SUVs and in the seventh-generation 2014 Corvette Stingray. Dubbed LT1 in the Corvette, it is the third smallblock in history bestowed with the “LT1/LT-1” designation, and despite sharing a cam-in-block architecture and 4.400-inch bore centers, the latest version has about as much in common with the previous versions as Erica Enders-Stevens’ Pro Stock Camaro has in common with Grumpy Jenkins’ original Pro Stock Vega. As it turns out, the new LT1 shares little more than an architectural lineage with the previous-generation LS engines. For one thing, the heads are completely different—with the valves’ positions reversed—and designed to support directfuel injection (where the fuel injectors spray directly into the combustion chambers, instead of into…

Dual-plane intakes tend to produce a broader torque curve, enhancing low- and midrange power at speeds of less than 6,000–6,500 rpm. They can generally tolerate a larger carburetor than equivalent single-plane intakes. On the other hand, the single-plane intake usually offers better air/fuelratio distribution potential because of its direct runner approach from the plenum to the cylinder-head inlet, with less tendency for air/fuel separation and consequent rich/lean cylinders than the dual-plane with its severely curved runners. The runner lengths on a good single-plane design are more nearly equal in length as well, which also helps diminish cylinder-to-cylinder variations. The single-plane’s straight runners and common plenum are easier to modify or port for increased flow on heavily modified engines. However, single-planes tend to be “peakier” than dual-planes, so carburetor selection and…