Innehållsförteckning för March 2008 från Hot Rod

As expected, our Top 100 Most Influential Hot Rods of All Time cover story in the Jan. ’08 issue elicited a huge number of responses, both positive and negative. But the most vehement came from a few readers who barbecued me big-time for calling Rick Dobbertin’s J2000 show car (below) stupid. Sorry everyone, and you too, Rick (who wrote in as well). It was a poor choice of words on my part. What I meant was that the car was so over-the-top in its execution, packaging, and attention to detail that it grew beyond the level of being a car and became more a piece of art—one that is in most opinions still unsurpassed today.—ROB KINNAN A DAUNTING TASK Congrats to HOT ROD for having the guts to pick the…

244 MPH WITH A HURST How fast would a NASCAR Nextel/Sprint Cup cargo if unhindered by restrictor plates or corners? Russ Wicks found out on October 9 when he piloted an ’07 Charger Cup car to 244.9 mph, reportedly a new record top end for a Stock Car, beating his previous record of 222 mph. We have no clue what the gearing was or if it had a cheater motor, but he claims it was “built to NASCAR specs,” so there ya go. We learned about the feat from Hurst Performance Products since the car had a Hurst Competition/Plus shifter in it. Cool.—ROB KINNAN HOW THEY MAKE IT: THE WHEELSMITH STEEL WHEELS A hot rodder himself, starting at the age of 14 with a ’32 three-window coupe, Bob Sage saw…

“I’ve built and driven Pro Street cars for years, but this was the ultimate time I’ve ever had. Drag Week™ is just so much fun.”—Steve Roth • MSD QUICKEST PASS:7.642 • MICKEY THOMPSON BEST 60-FOOT:1.194 • QUICKEST CHEVY Denny Terzich and crew weren’t happy after the ’06 Drag Week™. That’s because their ’67 Camaro only made it about four miles before overheating and forcing them to drop out. Frankly, we weren’t shocked, since the car was double-throw down radical, with a monster 6-71 blower setup that reached higher than the roof of the car and show-car-like shine that’s often a sign of impending doom for an event as punishing as Drag Week™. But boy, did they make up for it in 2007. Terzich originally bought the car to race himself…

This story is so Ed Roth, it’s almost unbelievable. And that’s just the way Big Daddy would want it. As of two years ago, when the Detroit Autorama featured a gathering of some 17 Roth-mobiles (both four- and three-wheel varieties; HRM Aug.’06) in a special posthumous Roth tribute, we thought nearly all of his far-out, fiberglass, mostly bubbletopped creations had finally been accounted for, especially with the totally unexpected appearance of Tweedy Pie. This little purple T-bucket roadster, ironically, was neither built by him (he stripped it, named it, then bought it), nor fiberglass (as nearly all other T-buckets were), nor had a bubbletop. But it became a well-known, popular Roth-mobile when Rod & Custom splashed it on its cover as “Roth’s New Rod!” in 1962, and Revell made a…

It says a lot about the current nature of the sport that the most successful new engine in American racing today is a 90-degree pushrod V-8. But if you look past the pushrods, the cast-iron block, and the ancient Holley four-barrel carburetor, you can see that otherwise, Chevy’s R07 is as advanced as any racing engine in the world. Guys who build winning engines for F1, Indy, and Le Mans will look inside Chevy’s latest NASCAR powerplant and see the very same hardware and technology they use. The external packaging looks a little anachronistic, that’s all. As soon as GM Racing introduced its previous NASCAR engine, the SB2 (small-block, generation 2) in 1998, the company went straight to work designing its replacement. The R99 (racing engine, ’99) and R03 engines…

HOT ROD 1948 2008 LALA LAND Once in a while we find stuff in our archives that just blows us away but was never printed in the magazine. That’s what we’ve got here, a photo by Pat Broiler from November 1968 revealing High Performance Used Cars at 500 S. Brand in Glendale, California. It was photographed for the now-defunct HOT ROD Industry News magazine, the publication that supported the organization that is now the SEMA show. This makes us long for those old days. It’s hard to believe that a world existed where a used car lot was dedicated to nothing but cheap, legit musclecars. The entire proof sheet this photo came from reveals cars such as a Hemi ’67 Coronet, a ’67 GTO, a GS Buick, a handful of…

PRO XB While we tend to pay no heed to them, Rick Ramsey saw untapped sleeper potential in the squarish Scion XB. His thoughts were to squeeze some serious horsepower in the teeny van while keeping it as stock-appearing as possible. Of course, the Weld Draglites are a bit of a giveaway. After he gutted an’04 box down to a rolling chassis, Rick delivered it to Advanced Automotive Concepts in Baltimore, Maryland, where a 440hp small-block Chevy (mounted with an engine plate) and a 700-R4were shoehorned in. The rear was tubbed and the factory dead axle was swapped for an 8.8 Ford rear with a four-link and coilovers. The stock doghouse was no match for the small-block, so a wheelbarrow bucket was flipped over and welded in. Sounds like a…

It sounds angry. Really angry. And man, it’s hauling ass on those wooden-spoke wheels on a winding road through the beautiful Finnish countryside. By the time you catch up to it at a diner down the road, it’s chugging, sputtering, and sounding like a standard 200.5ci L-head four-cylinder engine. What’s going on here? You’ve just encountered the most clandestine prewar sleeper we’ve ever come across. What appears to be a nuts-and-bolts restoration of a Model A sedan is actually a very precisely tuned and stealthily constructed hot rod. Kari Mäkelä and his team of metal craftsmen at Mäkelä Auto Tuning (MAT, www.mat.fi), which specializes in building and restoring vintage sports cars and race cars, is the mastermind behind this surreptitious build. The owner of the A, a widely renowned rally…

PRO-SERIES SUSPENSION JME Enterprises 619/669-9904 www.jmeenterprises.com It’s quite a feather in the cap to win SEMA’s Best Engineered New Product award, and this year it was our duty to present it to JME Enterprises for its radical new SLA double wishbone for ’64 ½ to ’70 and ’79—’04 Mustangs. According to JME, this clean-slate system is a nocompromise, race-inspired design for serious driving. Machined from 6061 T6 billet aluminum, both wheel track and width are adjustable and the K-member’s centersection is removable for quick oil pan access. The 2-inch-drop spindles have built-in caster for stability and are designed to work with a stock Fox or SN-95 Mustang rack-and-pinion. Coilovers can either be in the standard configuration, or for serious track cars needing easy tunability, a cantilever version is available that…

RODDERS IN IRAQ Humvees are cool and all, but our boys miss their hot rods while they’re inthat big sandbox overseas, and they wanted us to know they miss their HOT ROD too! The soldiers flying our banner are from the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, and are stationed in Baghdad, Iraq. If you’d like to send a little morale boost to our troops visit www.anysoldier.com, www.anymarine.com, www.anysailor.com, www.anyairman.com, or www.anycoastguard.com. MARTIN STREET RACE GUITAR CF Martin Guitars and Guitar Center know cars and guitars go nicely together, which is why their new creation puts cars on a guitar. It’s not a cheap gimmick though; this one’s for the discerning collector. The Martin Hot Rod Street Race Custom Shop acoustic guitar is a masterpiece built by CF Martin…

BACK TO’62 ’54 Oldsmobile Holiday • Dave Adams • Youngstown, OH Back in 1962, Dave and his buddy Ernie Malamisura ran A&M Automotive in Youngstown, Ohio, and an example of their handiwork is this’54 Olds owned by a friend of theirs, Billy Jo Tomasic. Billy Jo drove the car until he went into the Navy and upon his return it saw little street time. Billy passed away in 1988 and Dave lost track of the car, but when he spotted a picture of it on a “For Sale” sign, he knew he wanted it back. Forty five years later, the Olds still wears the Honduras Maroon paint that Dave sprayed, and underhood is the same race-cammed Olds 394 bored to 407 with dual quads that Ernie put together—which is how…

THE BULLITT IS BACK Now in its fourth year of production, the current S197/D2C Mustang is still pulling pretty fair sales numbers. That probably surprised the industry a little. Fora model that deep into its product cycle, Ford has done a solid job maintaining consumer demand for its iconic fifth-generation pony-car—and a darn good job building the car too: The ’08 Mustang recently topped the rankings in three J.D. Power surveys for initial quality, consumer appeal, and reli-ability. Ford’s success with the Mustang no doubt played a part in inspiring GM and Chrysler to take one more run at the ponycar segment with the upcoming Camaro and Challenger. To help maintain that momentum through the current product cycle, here comes Ford with a new addition to the Mustang lineup: the…

THE WORLD’S FASTEST LS-POWER CARS It’s no secret that there are some wicked-fast Gen III and IV (LS-1, LS-6, and soon) cars out there, but there’s never been an event where they could all gather and run heads up in their own class, as the 5.0L Mustang crowd has enjoyed for two decades. That changed this past October when the NMCA and GM Performance Parts held its first LSX Shootout at the Nitto Tire NMCA Finals in Memphis. With real money, killer prizes from GM, and, more importantly, bragging rights on the line, we figured the event would draw the heavy hitters of the LS world, and it did. There were two heads-up classes—LSX Drag Radial and LSX All Motor—plus an index class and a separate class within True Street…

Wedged hard in-between Interstate 5 and an ever-expanding behemoth shopping mall called The Burbank Town Center is a modest, white-stucco-and-red-brick garage that looks like it was thrown up over a weekend in 1938. It’s exactly the sort of hardscrabble work space that pioneers like Ed Iskendarian, Vic Edelbrock Sr., and Alex Xydias would rent around Southern California during the late ’40s and early ’50s to establish the businesses that have become the backbone of the hot rodding industry. It’s probably been the home of 50 small businesses since it was built. But right now, it’s where Troy Ladd’s Hollywood Hot Rods (HHR) is planted. “I’ve given this talk a hundred times, so I know—I got this speech down,” explains Ladd in describing what he hopes separates his shop from the…

“There’s no substitute for cubic inches” is a well-worn expression that’s been shouted for years. Well, excuse us for the newsflash, but there are a few substitutes, and on that list is the magic of rpm. In a normally aspirated engine, torque potential falls in a fairly narrow range dependent upon cubic inches. However, horsepower is a factor of two components: torque and rpm. Place torque up the rev range and horsepower will be harvested in abundance—and you’ll have no end of fun reaping the benefits. Nothing is as visceral as an engine that keeps on coming as the tach climbs, making more and more steam as the revs fly up the scale. Some numbers here prove the point. Three hundred eighty six and and a half lb-ft of torque…

Chrysler’s performance parts division Mopar Performance (MP) is now selling 392ci Hemi engines, brand-new in the crate. This isn’t your Grandpa’s 392, but a modern 6.4L Hemi stroker based on current production 6.1L Hemi engines installed in Chrysler passenger cars. The 4.055-inch bore x 3.795-inch stroke aftermarket-only motors just happen to displace 392.1 ci—certainly no mere coincidence, evoking as it does fond memories of Chrysler’s early Hemi heritage. Like MP’s previously released 5.7L crate engines, the new 392s are available in both carbureted (PN P5153604) and EFI (PN 5153605) versions. Out of the box these motors carry serious power ratings: 525 hp at 6,400 rpm and 510 lb-ft of torque at 5,200 rpm for the EFI version; 540 hp at 6,500 rpm and 490 lb-ft at 5,400 rpm for the…

TEASING YOU Don’t you just hate it when the media constantly jerk your chain with those annoying teasers? Will Lassie rescue little Timmy from the well? Tune in next week for the thrilling conclusion. Now even the news channels use them. What government has just been toppled? Which Hollywood pop tart forgot her underwear again? We’ll have these breaking stories and more… right after this commercial break. Anyway, be sure to read the full story on the ’08 Dodge Challenger, complete with stunning photography by David Freers, in HOT ROD… next month. —BILL MCGUIRE…