Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2021 i Hemmings Muscle Machines

“An appreciation for mechanical things tends to correspond with a love of cars…” I’ve just come from wrestling with my old Maytag washing machine in an effort to keep it going. I’m sure it probably seems a bit ridiculous to try and extract more service from a 40-year-old appliance, but poking around online has shown that I’m not alone in this quest. The consensus is they just don’t build stuff like this anymore. I really hate to sound like the proverbial old guy with such statements, but they seem painfully true. From what I’m finding, most of the washers I could pick up at the local home center will be worn out after just five years of daily use. To me, that’s way too brief a lifespan. An appreciation for…

BANG-ON 442 I wish to congratulate Barry Kluczyk and Chuck Yee for the great article on the 442 in Electric Spice (“Up From the Ashes,” HMM #207). Chuck did a great job, as did designer Murray Pfaff. I can only put it this way: That car is the way a ’77 442 would look if GM was selling one now. The wheels are gorgeous, and I love the font and style of the lettering and the colors. The interior combination of cloth and leather is sumptuous —luxury oriented, while sophisticated in a European styling sense. The motor is a treat and I love the gold treatment and homage to classic 442 engines. It was really well done. I have subscribed since issue #1 and this car compares well with many…

The way we ended up obtaining this car was interesting enough, but then to discover later on it was a “Brass Hat” AMX makes its history a little more compelling. Add the trailer hitch and it changes again. When people see the hitch today, they are usually surprised to learn that we had it installed and used it. Fortunately, it’s never been in an accident, so that has helped us maintain as much of the car’s originality as possible. Some of the decals under the hood are deteriorating, but they tell a story. Same with the original floor carpet and seat upholstery. The only other upgrade we bit the bullet on was a modern air conditioning system that replaced the factory unit; the Arizona sun can be relentless. There’s a…

FOR HYDRAULIC ’65 GTO CLUTCH Q: I’m almost age 80, and, not surprisingly, I have arthritis in my knees. The last two summers, my left knee has gotten quite painful at times when using the clutch of the Hurst four-speed on my GTO, and consequently I am not driving it as much as I would like. I also have a ’19 Mustang Bullitt (my summer daily driver), which is only available with a six-speed manual, but that is not too bothersome —there must be a hydraulic assist or something like that on the Mustang. I prefer manual transmissions in these cars. Is there anything that can be done to the GTO to make depressing the clutch easier? There is a significant difference between the effort required for these two clutches.…

“I’ve subscribed toHMM(andHemmings Classic Car) for more than a decade and look forward to every issue. I especially enjoy reading subscribers’ letters about multigenerational interest in a particular car. In our case, it’s the Buick GS 455. I first learned of these cars while at the University of Florida, and began attending the Buick GS Nationals back in the late ’80s. I really liked the 1970-’72 body styles, and would pick up old GS cars whenever I found one I could afford (back in the ’80s, you could still find these old A-bodies sitting by the road with a “for sale” sign in the window). I eventually found myself with several old Buick Gran Sports and Skylarks stashed in barns on our farm. In 1996 I got married, and we…

AMERICA HAD PLENTY of high-performance cars before the age of muscle. Postwar, Cadillac and Oldsmobile kicked things off with their OHV V-8 engines, and soon plenty of Chrysler divisions joined in with various Hemis and their aircraft-engine-inspired combustion chambers. By 1955, Detroit offered 300-horsepower cars, and just three years later came the first 400-horsepower American passenger car — a Mercury. Power ratings and cubic-inch displacements grew to keep up with ever-expanding chassis dimensions in the latter half of the ’50s; fuel injection, multiple carburetion, slick-shifting transmissions with floor-mounted hardware, all were on the docket for a hotshoe in the know. By the early ’60s, most American nonluxury car divisions offered a big car on the boil. The marketing departments could barely keep up with Detroit’s advances in power. There were…

HURST EQUIPPED CARTECH • 800-551-4754 • CARTECHBOOKS.COM • $39.95 The “H” logo was sought in the original muscle era, and cars bearing its telltale emblem were highly coveted for the high-performance parts they represented. CarTech has revised and updated its popular Hurst Equipped title (ISBN 9781613255933), and this 192-page softcover written by Mark Fletcher and Richard Truesdell now contains 400 photos and advertising images. The book takes readers from natural-born mechanic and hot-rodder George Hurst’s personal beginnings, and those of his collaborators, engineer Bill Campbell and technician Don Lane, and through the early products of late-’50s Hurst-Campbell, including its famous floor-shifter conversion kits. We see the development of the famous “Hemi Under Glass” wheelstanders, appearances by the incomparable Linda Vaughn, the factory-allied specials like the Hurst/Olds and AMC SC/Rambler,…

JANUARY 3 Medina Indoor Swap Meet Medina, Ohio • 800-553-8745 3 Sumter Swap Meets Bushnell, Florida • 727-848-7171 7-17 Mecum Auctions Kissimmee, Florida • 262-275-5050 15-17 Auto Mania Indoor Collector Car Flea Market & Corral Allentown, Pennsylvania • 717-243-7855 16-17 Autoparts Swap ’n Sell West Springfield, Massachusetts • 860-871-6376 16-24 Barrett-Jackson Auction Scottsdale, Arizona • 480-421-6694 20 WorldwideAuctioneers Scottsdale, Arizona • 800-990-6789 20-24 Russo and Steele Auction Scottsdale, Arizona • 602-252-2697 21 BonhamsAuctions Scottsdale, Arizona • 415-391-4000 22 RM Sotheby’s Auction Phoenix, Arizona • 519-352-4575 22-23 Gooding & Company Auction Scottsdale, Arizona • 310-899-1960 22-24 Sumter Swap Meets Winter Extravaganza Bushnell, Florida • 727-848-7171 Please note that these events are active as of press time despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. We recommend you verify the status before making plans to…

DRIVEN: 2021 RAM 1500 TRX Me: “How fast should I hit this jump?” Instructor: “How fast do you want to hit it?” Me: “Dunno — how fast can I hit it?” Instructor: “Just hit it.” Me: “Okey-dokey.” Heeding the instructor’s advice, I planted my right foot to the floor of the 2021 RAM 1500 TRX, heading for a jump at Wild West Motorsports Park in Sparks, Nevada. As one of the first journalists to climb behind the wheel of the new TRX, I had only a fair idea of what to expect. Sure, I knew it was going to be fast and a beast off-road, but if I’m honest, the performance levels here had me wondering what type of illegal substances were ingested by the engineers when they put this…

Car owners should restore their cars to their desires and not to the standards of a club or national organization. In the end, you want to be happy with what you built with your own funds and desires. There’s no such thing as a perfect car, and no matter how hard you work at it, there will always be a few dissenting opinions. This was one of the most challenging cars to restore as well as one of the most expensive, based on parts availability and the amount of pot metal trim pieces that needed to be chrome plated. But this car shows that a big-body Buick can compete with popular muscle cars and be just as credible as well as desirable.…

FUELING AROUND Q: Love your HMM column, Ray. I’m just wondering how often you have seen a problem I managed to solve. I recently purchased my dream car, a 1961 Corvette with a 350 stroker and Dominator carburetor. When we would drive it to a location, like a restaurant to pick up food, the car would die shortly after leaving. I did a carb rebuild and later a swap to an Edelbrock carb, with the same results. Pouring gas in the vents got it fired back up, but did not always get me back on the road. I usually had to let the engine cool down for 30 minutes or more. So, I installed a glass fuel filter, and discovered a ton of bubbles in the fuel line. The fuel…

RESERVE: Minimum price owner will accept SELLING PRICE: What the vehicle sold for, inclusive of buyer’s 5-percent fee RECENT MARKET RANGE: The low-to-high value range for the vehicle based on published results of similar vehicles sold at auction over the previous 18 months Hemmings Auctions is a live, online-only collector-car auction staffed by live customer service professionals ready to help bidders and sellers with any questions. See more at hemmingsauctions.com. If you have questions, comments, or suggestions, email Auctions Editor Terry Shea: terryshea@hemmings.com.…

Scottsdale, Arizona, will be the center of the classic car auction universe this January. Despite COVID-19 upending numerous events in 2020, a full slate of action is still planned for this upcoming winter. The level of scaling back, social distancing, and precautions that each auction house will practice is still unknown, but as of this writing, six major auction firms, at a minimum, are planning to be there. Many of the companies have shown success with online bidding during the pandemic, so — as in past years — there will likely be a lot of sales this January, despite social distancing. View the calendar above for the current schedule, and contact the auction companies for the latest news and information. You can also see our daily coverage of Scottsdale at…

“I now have a totally dependable driving classic that I don’t have to worry about…” Yikes — it’s 2021! That makes my GTO 56 years old. Over a half century of providing excitement, sport, and fun for the original owner and then me. The only problem with that is it’s probably in better appearing and running condition than I am! The last time I checked, nobody had rebuilt all of my mechanicals, replaced and buffed out my skin, or resoled the bottom of my feet. I’m still running with all my totally original parts. And they never had a warranty. Am I jealous? You bet! That muscle machine will surely outlast me, and probably the next loving owner as well. The only thing that our cars have to fear is…