Hemmings Muscle Machines January 2017

“ The Hellcat Challenger isn’t just brutally fast, it’s fairly luxurious and roomy, and it will purr down the highway at 1,200 RPM if that’s what you want it to do.” As I stood in the driveway, I kept trying to imagine what I would have thought if I’d had any knowledge, say, just 15 years ago, of the Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat sitting before me. But, even if the information had come from the ghost of Walter P. Chrysler himself, I’d likely have just dismissed it. A rear-drive, supercharged HEMI V-8 coupe, styled after the E-body Challenger and making 707 horsepower, waiting at a Dodge dealer near you? Yeah, right. Just in case you absolutely refuse to pay any attention to late-model cars, the Hellcat Challenger and its Hellcat…

WITH THIS ’RING, I THEE DOMINATE Armed with only a stock Camaro ZL1 fortified with Sparco chairs, six-point harnesses, a roll hoop and data acquisition equipment, Camaro ride-and-handling engineer Drew Cat-tell drove Germany’s legendary Nürburgring Nordschleife in 7:29.60. What does that mean? Well, that’s a whopping 11.67 seconds quicker than the previous ZL1’s fast lap, for starters—over a course that’s 12.9 miles long with literally hundreds of turns. But what does it mean? It’s quicker than a whole host of cars costing several times as much, including the Mercedes SLS AMG GT, a variety of hairy Porsche 911 variants, Lexus LFA, and a few recent Ferraris and Lamborghinis. It’s also within two seconds of the all-wheel-drive twin-turbo Nissan GTR, Lamborghini Huracan LP610-4, McLaren MP4-12C and Porsche Carrera GT around the…

PETER BROCK RECEIVES SIMEONE’S SPIRIT OF COMPETITION AWARD The man who had a hand in developing both the Corvette and the Mustang for racing purposes has added another piece of hardware to his mantle, as the Simeone Automotive Museum has presented Peter Brock with its annual Spirit of Competition Award. Brock, who famously joined the General Motors design staff at age 19, went on to contribute to the design of the Corvette Sting Ray and then, with Shelby American, worked on the designs for both the Shelby G.T. 350 and the Shelby Cobra Daytona. He later founded Brock Racing Enterprises, dedicated to putting Toyotas and Datsuns on podiums, and he’s spent time teaching others to drive sports cars, building competitive show cars as well as covering races in the United…

THE DEFINITIVE FIREBIRD & TRANS AM GUIDE 1967-1969 Rocky Rotella • CarTech • 800-551-4754 • www.cartechbooks.com • $39.95 Debuting on the eve of the F-body’s 50th anniversary, Rocky Rotella’s in-depth look at Pontiac’s Firebird is the result of years’ worth of research. Rotella, a life-long Firebird enthusiast and HMM contributor, who was influenced at an early age while riding in his father’s ’70s Trans Ams, has been gathering information on these cars since long before the notion of a book arose. Once it did, the project really intensified. In addition to the useful decoding information you’d expect, this book has lots of GM factory photos and internal documents to provide insight on the backstory of the Firebird’s development and evolution, supported by interviews with key personnel involved with the…

The idea that a high-performance engine is best matched with a manual transmission is a point of view shared by many an ardent muscle-car enthusiast. It’s a natural pairing along the lines of peanut butter and jelly, like a burger and fries, like… well, you get the idea. With a manual transmission, the driver has complete control of the shift points, there’s no power loss through a torque convertor, and, since manual transmissions historically provide more gears than their automatic counterparts, there’s more opportunity to keep said engine in its sweet spot. Chevrolet seemed to subscribe to this ideology more than many manufacturers of the muscle era, for up until 1969, its top-dog solid-lifter engines were required to be matched with a stick shift. But as muscle cars approached their…

SPECIFICATIONS PRICE Base price . . . . . . . . . . . . . $2,405.00 Price as profiled . . . . . . . . $3,456.50 Options on car profiled . . . SS package (includes power front discs), $280.20; L78 375-hp 396, $316.00; automatic transmission, $290.40; limited-slip differential, $42.15; AM radio, $61.10; tinted glass, $32.65 ENGINE Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1969 Chevrolet Mark IV “big-block” OHV-V-8, cast-iron block and cylinder heads Displacement . . . . . . . . . . 396 cubic inches Bore x stroke . . . . . . . . . . . 4.0938 x 3.76 inches Compression ratio . . . . .…