Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2016 i Hemmings Muscle Machines

“Anyone from the New York metro area can tell you, hot cars have long been a part of the city’s fabric, and cruising those cars around the neighborhood is a time-honored pastime...” For many of us, the cars that move us the most are the ones that are linked to a particular time and place in our lives. Our exhaustive searches for specific parts and pieces required in order to complete meticulous restorations are, in some ways, attempts to restore, or at least preserve, the memories and feelings associated with the days when we first enjoyed those cars. And for most of us, having those cars back, the way we remembered them, does indeed contribute to the connection with the good ol’ days. But what if you could actually go…

BUT ENOUGH ABOUT ME: A MEMOIR Burt Reynolds with Jon Winokur • www.penguin.com • $27.95 Countless stories are crafted over the course of 50+ years in show business, and Burt Reynolds has compiled many of his into one compelling read, imparted with humility and his wry sense of humor. This collection delves into his relationships with numerous Hollywood heavy hitters and other actors, directors, stuntmen, friends, teammates and family members, and it incorporates interesting anecdotes. There’s also plenty of self-evaluation, including the highs and lows of how he treated some people—and how they treated him. This tome should be appreciated in its entirety, but since this is a muscle car magazine, chapters that will be of particular interest are “Hal Needham” and “Smokey.” Though car movies aren’t the focus…

Not every award-winning muscle car restoration rolls out of a professional shop, paid for with a second mortgage. Moreover, there’s no law stating that a project must be finished in a made-for-cable-TV time frame. Take, for example, this ’68 Chevelle SS 396 convertible, rebuilt to better-than-new condition by a first-time restorer, over a period of 12 years. Keith Cook, of Butler, Indiana, farmed out his Chevelle’s body and paint, as well as the upholstery, but handled the car’s disassembly, reassembly and all the other myriad details that complicate extensive restoration projects. When he started working on the car back in 1995, he wasn’t an expert in the nuances of Chevelle factory correctness, but he soon found a very effective way to educate himself in that field as well. “This story…

Had Burt Reynolds’ life adhered to his plan, he would never have starred in popular car movies like White Lightning, Smokey and the Bandit I and II, Hooper, The Cannonball Run and the rest. Nor would he have amassed hundreds of other movie, stage and TV credits, been the top box office draw from the mid-1970s into the early 1980s, a Golden Globe and Emmy winner or an Oscar nominee. That’s because young Burt, then known as “Buddy,” had his eye on a pro football career. Burt was born in Lansing, Michigan, in 1936, but raised in Palm Beach County, Florida; his father, “Big Burt” Reynolds, was an authoritarian and the local police chief. His mother, Fern, a former nurse, doted on Burt and his sister, Nancy Ann, who was…

I quite literally laughed out loud reading Terry McGean’s column in the June issue (“Long-Term Education,” HMM #154). Suffice it to say, I can relate! I still work on the same car I bought almost 40 years ago, that being a 1971 Mustang that I have transformed over the years from a lowly 302-cu.in. 2-bbl, C4 and 8-inch non-Posi diff to a 600-cu.in. race car that can run 9.0s and may even dip into the 8s soon. I have added a ’70 GTO that is a numbers-matching 400/four-speed car, but that still gets driven regularly on nice days. I can’t tell you how many times I have wondered why it seems to take me so much longer to get things done now than it did when I was oh-so-much younger.…

This is all my fault. This photo shoot. This woman, this Pontiac, this parking job that sees the Rubenesque curves of a ’71 GTO spilling out of the rigid confines of a Japanese parking space. This mirror-glassed, stainless-edged and white-tile-walled city, this gray day, this poppin’ Carousel Red paint making every other bleak, quiet, vertical thing on the street disappear into the background. This meeting. I did this. I made it happen. I am to blame. I confess. First, a word (or 200) about the owner. Hiroko Sakuma, or Hiroko-san as I call her out of respect, is unconventional and unapologetic in equal measure: She is a driven woman who prefers to do her own driving. In the face of Japan’s rigid gender roles, she refuses to bow to tradition.…

HMM PRODUCT TEST: IN-WASH ODOR ELIMINATOR This is a little different for us—testing something that seems more household than automotive. But the makers of Febreze In-Wash Odor Eliminator approached us claiming their new product was aimed, in part, at professionals like mechanics, who had to deal with particularly smelly clothing on a regular basis. We know how to make our clothes reek of the garage, so we agreed to check it out. This product might appear to be a new type of detergent, or some sort of substitute, but it’s actually intended to work with the detergent you normally use, and the idea is that it will free your garments of even the most persistent odors. To be honest, we haven’t really been let down by good old laundry detergent…

THE NUMBERS TOTAL SALES: $23,200,000 TOP MUSCLE CAR SALE: 1969 Mustang Boss 429, $550,000 UPCOMING AUCTION BY BARRETT-JACKSON DATE: October 13-15 LOCATION: Las Vegas CONTACT: www.barrett-jackson.com LEGEND CONDITION: 1=Excellent; 2=Very Good; 3=Average; 4=Poor; 5=Major Project RESERVE: Minimum price owner will accept TOP BID: The highest offer made (but vehicle did not sell) SELLING PRICE: What the vehicle sold for AVERAGE SELLING PRICE: Average market value of vehicles in similar condition For three days in April the collector-car auction scene shifts to South Florida, where Barrett-Jackson puts on its annual event at the South Florida Fairgrounds in West Palm Beach. The perfect sunny weather brought out the crowds, big time, and the buyers, too, as the total weekend sales reached nearly $25 million. This was Barrett-Jackson’s 14th year in South Florida,…

AUGUST 3 Rich Penn Auctions Des Moines, Iowa • 913-291-6688 www.richpennauctions.com 13 Silver Auctions Shelton, Washington • 800-255-4485 www.silverauctions.com 18-20 Mecum Auctions Monterey, California • 262-275-5050 www.mecum.com 18-20 Russo & Steele Monterey, California • 602-252-2697 www.russoandsteele.com 19 Bonhams Carmel, California • 415-391-4000 www.bonhams.com/carmel 19-20 New England Auto Auction Owls Head, Maine • 207-594-4418 www.owlshead.org 19-20 RM Sotheby’s Auctions Monterey, California • 519-352-4575 www.rmsothebys.com 20-21 Gooding & Company Pebble Beach, California • 310-899-1960 www.goodingco.com Check dates with auction houses before traveling…

CHEVY’S NEW TEN-SPEED Remember when only bicycles had 10 speeds, and you were lucky if your car had four? These days, bikes have 18 and even 24 speeds, and soon, cars will have 10. Chevy’s upcoming ZL1 Camaro will be the first volume-production car to offer an optional paddle-shifted ten-speed automatic transmission against the ZL1’s 640-hp supercharged LT4 V-8. It features an aggressive 4.70 first gear for lightning-quick starts, and has an even deeper overdrive than the eight-speed, offering lower revs and better fuel economy on the highway. Compared to Porsche’s class-leading PDK dual-clutch transmission, the ZL1’s 1-2 shifts are 36 percent faster, while 2-3 and 3-4 shifts are at least 26 percent quicker. It’s also roughly the same physical size as the sixth-generation Camaro’s optional eight-speed automatic, as it…

This muscle car odyssey may ring familiar: Boy buys muscle car in the 1970s, he later sells it due to life’s responsibilities, he seeks out another muscle car decades later to relive his glory days, and the scale of its restoration grows from modest to massive. It sounds simple enough when described here, but living it, as Roger and Mary Jo Gaultney learned, requires trust, deep pockets and intestinal fortitude. Roger bought his first car as a high school junior in 1972 — a white ’69 383 Road Runner with a Torque-Flite — that initiated his lifelong affection for the model. After eight years of prideful ownership, the Plymouth, taking a backseat to marriage and starting a business, was sold. Twenty years later, the Cordova, Maryland, resident was finished sitting…

WOW, you talk about a curtain call. T-Type, Grand National, turbocharged grunt, and a proper rear-drive platform. Too bad that platform, the venerated General Motors G-body, was about to go away. Those who loved performance during the Reagan years were absolutely nuts about the parade of turbocharged V-6 Buicks that had been making noise on various levels since 1978, and if they were unorthodox in terms of powertrain and packaging, trust us, nobody was complaining. In a great decade of image remaking, Buick had reversed its somewhat stodgy past as a car for doctors and bankers into something new. The turbos turned it into Mike Tyson. You know, the baddest car on the planet. All right, that’s some hyperbole, but try to name another car from the Eighties that was…

ENGINE With ready-to-strike Cobra decals prominently displayed in three locations on the car’s body, Ford wisely equipped the intermediate with a 360-hp 429. Upgrades included Cobra, Cobra Jet Ram Air and Super Cobra Jet. BRAKES Everyone was still more concerned about going fast than stopping straight, or so it seemed, since engineers fitted hydraulic drums as standard equipment, though power assist was on the option chart, as were power front discs for another $65. TRANSMISSION If you were hoping for a variety, you’d be out of luck. Ford provided only two choices to buyers: a Toploader close-ratio four-speed manual with Hurst linkage, or the SelectShift Cruise-O-Matic C-6 automatic. Both can handle copious torque input. INTERIOR All go-fast business here. Vinyl bench seats were standard in a number of colors; however,…

You know how some cows will eschew a pasture because it’s been too badly chewed over? In the late 1960s, that’s the spot where Chrysler found itself. Not because of milk shortages or anything, but because it had been dominating in the various sanctioning bodies’ Super Stock classes, and Super Stock match racing, and it was getting a little stale. Coincidentally, in this same general time period, the National Hot Rod Association was realigning some of its eliminator categories, with an eye towards a more compact, ready-for-TV event, which was rumored to include a new race category that some people were calling Pro Stock. Today, it’s a ball to run down the classification list for an early drag race, where you’ll find classes such as Street Eliminator, Top Gas, Gas…

“You could easily make the argument that Chrysler’s Letter Cars were the first muscle cars.” Before there was a Pontiac GTO, before there was a Plymouth Road Runner, Dodge Charger R/T, Olds 4-4-2, Buick Gran Sport or Chevrolet Chevelle SS 454, before any of the iconic muscle cars of the golden era existed, there were the Chrysler Letter Cars. Remember? Starting in 1955 with the C-300, Chrysler offered buyers what they could not get anywhere else: a pre-packaged, high-performance muscle car right off the showroom floor. No need to order options to get a special engine or suspension or interior or cool emblems. It was all there just by buying a Letter Series Chrysler. In 1955, it was the C-300, 300B in ’56, 300C in ’57, 300D in ’58, all…

SPECIFICATIONS ENGINE Block type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1975-era Pontiac cast-iron OHV V-8 Cylinder heads . . . . . . . . . . Pontiac cast-iron 6S, 2.11/1.66-inch valves Displacement . . . . . . . . . . . 400 cubic inches Bore x stroke . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.12 inches x 3.75 inches Compression ratio . . . . . . . . 7.6:1 Pistons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stock Pontiac cast pistons Horsepower @ RPM . . . . . . 210 (net) @ 4,000 Torque @ RPM. . . . . . . .…

For me as a teenager in the late 1970s, growing up in Fort Dodge, Iowa, street racing was a way of life — as I am sure was the case in many Midwestern small towns. Driving muscle cars, listening to rock-’n’-roll and raising hell on the weekends were just what you did. This story started the first time I got behind the wheel of my Uncle Larry’s 1967 GTO. Yes, it was stunning to look at, but when I drove it for the first time, I experienced a rush like I had never felt before. I was 17 years old and already had a love for street machines, but driving his GTO was like nothing I had ever seen or felt. My first car was a 1965 Buick Gran Sport,…

ROAD RACING FORDS TO FEATURE AT RM SOTHEBY’S MONTEREY SALE Reading like a what’s what of Ford road-racing history in the muscle era, a quintet of cars from the Jim Click Collection will be offered at RM Sotheby’s Monterey sale August 19-20, 2016, in Monterey, California. The offerings consist of a pair of 1964 Shelby 289 Cobras, arguably the best-handling and most-storied iteration of Carroll Shelby’s famous mating of British coachbuilding and Dearborn power; a 1966 Shelby G.T. 350 fastback, the car that guaranteed the Mustang’s reputation as a sporty car and not just a secretary special; 1969 and 1970 Mustang Boss 302s, representing Ford’s entry into SCCA’s Trans Am racing events in those years; and the Ferrari-hunting 1966 GT40, from the year that Ford captured its first of four…

TRANSMISSION SWAP CROSSMEMBER WOES Q:I just installed a GM TH200-4R overdrive automatic transmission in my 1986 Cutlass Supreme Brougham, and everything went great until I got to the cross-member. I had purchased a crossmember that came out of a 1987 Grand National, and it was stated that it would slide right in with zero modifications, but with my luck, the transmission mount didn’t line up. What do you recommend I do? Thanks in advance. Owen Winslow Via Facebook A: You didn’t say what engine your Cutlass has, or what transmission it originally came with, but we’ll assume it is the 307-cu.in. Oldsmobile V-8, since that was probably the most common choice for that year—there was no other V-8 offered in the ’86 Cutlass, and the V-6 had become a much…

August 2-7 Hot August Nights Reno/Sparks, Nevada . . . . . . . 775-356-1956 August 3-5 Iowa Gas Swap Meet and Auction Des Moines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515-321-7930 August 4 Hemmings Cruise-In Bennington, Vermont . . . . . . . 800-227-4373 August 5-7 Das Awkscht Fescht Macungie, Pennsylvania . . . . . 610-967-2317 August 6-7 Annual Summer Auto Parts Swap Meet Elkhorn, Wisconsin . . . . . . . . . 608-244-8416 August 7 All Ohio Parts Spectacular Summer Bonanza Randolph, Ohio . . . . . . . . . . . . 800-553-8745 August 7 Long Beach Hi Performance Swap Meet Long Beach, California . . . . . . 800-762-9785 August…

NATIONAL INVENTOR’S HALL OF FAME EXHIBIT SHOWS 1965, 2015 MUSTANGS SIDE BY SIDE Ever wonder how the cabin of a 1965 Ford Mustang convertible stacks up against the inside of its 2015 equivalent? Ever consider how many patents go into creating a new automobile, versus 50 years ago? Thanks to sponsorship from Ford, a new permanent exhibit at the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame answers these questions by parking a cutaway 1965 Mustang convertible next to a cutaway 2015 model. To allay the fears of collectors, no 1965 Mustangs were harmed in the making of the Intellectual Property Power exhibit, which relied on Ford-licensed reproduction body panels, chassis parts and interior components to create the display. Both the 1965 car (in left-hand drive) and the 2015 car (in right-hand drive,…

FUEL DAYS I really loved the “Flaming Floppers” segment in the June 2016 issue of HMM (#154), but there are a few things that I’d like to add. With regard to the photo of the M/T Grand Am burning at Gainsville in ’73, it stated that, “It was a long time before Funny Cars had escape hatches on the roof.” Please note the attached photo of Ed Shartman’s Cougar I took at the 1968 Super Stock Magazine Nationals at New York National Speedway. You can clearly see where there’s an opening on the roof for hasty exits. Also with regard to the Machine Gun Kelly photo, the car still lives! A little. As I have the left-side rocker panel of the car in my drag racing memorabilia collection. Although New…

In the April issue, we covered the story of what we called “The Accidental Muscle Car,” about a 1975 Pontiac Firebird that had been transformed from a dowdy smog-era 350 coupe into a respectable street performer. Owner Steve Segal, who has had several Chrysler Hemi cars, a ’72 Trans Am and his current ’73 SD-455 Formula, inherited the car from his grandmother, and has kept it as a memento ever since. The steady upgrades have been the result of his desire to make the car more pleasing to behold and more fun to drive, and while it’s much more attractive these days, waking up the driving experience proved to be a challenge. After upgrading the original 350 with a stock-type four-barrel intake and carb, ’74-style stock dual exhaust and even…

ZDDP… AGAIN Q: What is your opinion on the zinc/ phosphorus debate? I just installed a new crate 350 in my Chevy C-10 truck. This is a complete stock configuration. I use Valvoline 10W-30 synthetic blend oil, and for $2.69 I add a bottle of STP oil treatment, which contains the ZDDP. I don’t know the PPM. With my AC-Delco oil filter, my oil change is about $20. Am I fine with what I’m doing? My mechanic said I don’t need to be overly concerned with expensive “classic car” oils and additives, not for a daily-driver stock set-up, which I use to putt around town. Thanks, Dave Somewhere in Massachusetts A:I have written on this many times before, but will introduce the topic once more for your benefit. The need…

Until the 1949 Cadillac and Oldsmobile V-8s started hitting wrecking yards in the early 1950s, hot rodding was pretty much a Ford game. Today, it’s hard enough to find folks who can remember how early Fords were hopped up, let alone to figure out the traditional ways to extract power from non-Ford components. So a guy or gal who wants to build a speed machine with an early, non-Ford engine these days faces some real challenges. But there is opportunity there, too. The Montana Dodge Boys: Chris King of Win-net, Tony Smith of Lewistown and Peter Hendrickson, of Bozeman, freely admit that picking a Dodge Brothers Fast Four engine from the 1920s to take Land Speed Racing was an unconventional choice in the extreme. “Had we thought that hard about…

“ Then I’d give it another squirt and crank it three or more times until it started. No more of the good old, hop in, give it a quick squirt of gas and fire it up.” It’s amazing how little mechanical or electrical things about our muscle machines can cause such perplexing problems. Big stuff like a brake job or buying new tires, which I consider normal maintenance, is usually taken in stride because it’s easy to understand and somewhat expected. No frustration, no worries, just pay the bill and get down the road. Not so with little unexpected problems that can irk and frustrate you and, for sure, me. Here’s my latest: Over the last several months, I started regularly having trouble starting my ’65 GTO’s engine. I try…