Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2021 i Hemmings Muscle Machines

By the time you read this, Rick Treworgy’s Muscle Car City Museum in Punta Gorda, Florida, will be but a memory, another victim of the pandemic and its impact on global travel. Once among the largest collections of GM muscle cars and Corvettes in the world, roughly three-quarters of its inventory was sold by Mecum Auctions at no reserve on January 22-23. Located on Florida’s Gulf Coast, Punta Gorda normally enjoys a steady stream of seasonal visitors, many from foreign countries. In announcing the January 17 closure and subsequent auction of the 14-year-old museum’s contents, Treworgy, who amassed his fortune in commercial real estate, cited that in 2020 business was“going backward because of COVID and the lack of international tourists.”His intent was to keep around 50 of the cars for…

SOME KIDS PLAYED SPORTS AFTER SCHOOL. S Some were buried in homework. Others went out and found trouble — or made it. But from the age of eight, Barry Blomquist of La Crosse, Wisconsin, was bound to his dad’s used car business. “Bob Blomquist Used Cars in La Crosse was a small operation — we only ever had 20 cars at any one time, and we had a three-bay garage. And when I was eight years old, in the mid-1950s, Dad went blind.” From then on, Barry became his dad’s eyes — and, to a degree, his hands — at the shop. “It was very much sink or swim then,” he recalled. “If you grow up on a farm, you learn how to milk the cows; it’s part of the…

Spring is coming and it’s almost time to pull the cover off of your ride and get it ready for the road. You have your own ritual when it comes to preparing for car shows and cruises, but here’s a little tip that you may not have known. When you’re ready to take your car cover off after the winter months (or any extended period for that matter), be sure to get that layer of dust and debris off of the cover first. This will help reduce the possibility of contaminants being trapped in the cover as you fold it up and keep those things from damaging your paint when you put the cover back on. Also, it may help reduce the number of times you may need to wash…

PEOPLE LOVE TO HATE ON CHEVROLET. It’s the most popular division of what was long the world’s largest carmaker, but it sold so many cars for a reason. For decades, the combination of style, performance, and near ubiquity has also made 20th-century Chevrolet products excellent and highly accessible hobby cars. And while there were lots and lots of performance-type Chevrolets built between the debut of the small-block V-8 for 1955 and the detuning of the early 1970s, some combinations of factory equipment are very uncommon, yet highly sought after by collectors. Setting aside Corvettes for a moment, because their quasi-exotic nature means at times their collectibility overlaps with pricey European machinery, an LS6 Chevelle like this may be one of the most desirable regular-production Chevrolets, period. It owns that position…

TKX FIVE-SPEED CONVERSION PACKAGES MODERN DRIVELINE • 208-453-9800 • MODERNDRIVELINE.COM • CALL The new TKX five-speed kits are designed as an update for your three-or four-speed gearbox and are completely customizable to your specific needs. Designed, tested, and built specifically for the aftermarket, the new gearbox features 600-lb-ft torque capacity and is capable of 8,000-rpm shifts. Each kit comes with all of the components you need, so there is no need to shop for hard-to-find parts or items from other vendors. Built for easy installation, packages are available for Chevelle, Nova, Camaro, Corvette, Impala, Buick, Olds, Pontiac, Mustang, Falcon, Fairlane, Galaxie, Cobra, Tiger, Mopar A and B-body, and more. COPPER KIT AMERICAN AUTOWIRE INC. • 800-482-9473 • AMERICANAUTOWIRE.COM • $199 Steel is a poor conductor, so using your…

Spinal Tap’s lead guitarist, Nigel Tufnel, had an amp that famously went to 11. The volume knob in this Charger’s 19-speaker stereo goes to 38. It’s a metaphor for the rest of the car. Everything about the 2021 Dodge Charger Hellcat Redeye is over-the-top, are-you-kidding-me gonzo. It’s got 797 horsepower on tap. It does 10-second quarter-miles and hits 200 mph flat out. It goes around a road course quicker than Sam Posey’s 1970 Trans-Am Challenger. The orange paint on the brake calipers alone adds $600, and it’s $80,000 out the door as you see it here. And it’s purple! We all know that the Charger Hellcat Redeye is a big, fast, capable sedan. But what’s it like to live with? Beyond every Challenger owner blipping his throttle next to you…

THERE’S A REASON WHY plumbers and electricians are paid so well for the services they provide. Imagine, if you can, living in a world without the convenience of innumerable electrical contrivances, or the availability of hot and cold running water with merely the twist of a handle. Living in such an environment today would definitely be difficult if not practically impossible, wouldn’t it? And when applied to our favorite muscle machines, the idea of operating them without the benefits of proper electrical connections or fluid transfer are equally unimaginable. In this segment of our LS engine swap, we’ll conquer the complexities of wiring our electronics as well as creating the conduits through which our fuel, cooling, and lubricating fluids will flow. But first, here’s a brief recap. The platform for…

LAST MONTH, WE INTRODUCED YOU TO THIS 1977 Pontiac Trans Am, brought back from the brink by Quality Muscle Car Restorations in Scottsdale, Arizona. Acquired at auction, the car’s shiny paint hid a nightmare of rust, but it’s a coveted Y82 Special Edition car like those in the movie Smokey and the Bandit and a dead ringer for one the owner, John Prenzno of Paradise Valley, Arizona, had just out of high school. After a thorough evaluation of the car’s needs, QMCR owner Ward Gappa advised John of all the issues evident on the surface and John gave the go-ahead to dig in and get things fixed. Even when disassembly turned up even more problems, John doubled down and authorized a full restoration. When we left off, QMCR had begun…

A1970 Chevelle is one of my favorite cars, especially the LS6 450 horsepower. That’s the biggest production output figure you could get. I’ve had lots of Corvettes, Camaros, and Chevelles. I really like ’66, ’67, and ’70 Chevelles. An LS6 Chevelle is hard to find, but it’s a great car to do because it’s really a collector car—everybody likes a ’70 Chevelle and the LS6, that’s just a bonus. This one doesn’t have cowl induction, but it doesn’t make any difference. With that rock crusher trans and the 4.10 gears, it’s just a cool car.…

PALM SPRINGS, CALIFORNIA, is a prime location for vintage machinery — classics are practically part of the landscape here, far enough inland from the California coast that rust isn’t generally a concern, and in a town populated with people who have the bank accounts to take care of old cars properly. McCormick’s is well placed to take advantage of this happy convergence, which is why it hosts two sales here each year, one in February and one in November — in this case, November 20-22. Palm Springs isn’t a muscle car kind of town — no one is doing smoky burnouts on Ramon Road or Gene Autry Way at midnight—but that makes McCormick’s muscle car docket all the more intriguing. Plus, the desert city receives a number of direct flights…

There will be no America’s Most Beautiful Roadster or Al Slonaker Memorial Award winner for 2021, as the storied Grand National Roadster Show, along with the later-in-the-year Sacramento Autorama, has been pushed back to 2022. Normally held in January at the Pomona Fairplex, the GNRS — the longest-running indoor car show in the world — was initially rescheduled for May 2021 before being shifted into 2022. Organizers cited the “lack of clear guidelines from the state on how and when events can resume” as the reason for dropping both shows from the 2021 calendar. As of this writing, California remains one of the states most severely impacted by COVID-19, and it’s yet uncertain when indoor gatherings will again be permitted. John Buck, producer of the GNRS and Autorama, said of…

AN IMAGINATIVE PRESENTATION IS essential for drawing attention to a carmaker’s offerings at auto shows, special events, or dealers. Chevrolet’s Show and Display Department took the idea to the extreme when transforming a few early-produced 1969 Camaros into “Double-Header” cars. Several newspaper announcements from where they were scheduled to appear around the country stated, “The variety of ways a buyer can personalize Chevrolet’s popular Camaro in 1969 is dramatized in this specially built double-engined Camaro…” An RS/SS body; an RS/SS front-end assembly with a 350-cu.in. V-8, TH350 three-speed automatic, and a highly detailed subframe and suspension; and a standard Camaro front end with the 250-cu.in. straight-six and a Powerglide two-speed automatic were attached to three platforms. Mechanisms and electric motors worked in concert to rotate them and synchronize the tilting…

FORD MUSTANG V8-MOTOR FRANZIS • AMAZON.COM • $189.97 The hottest regular-production engine available in the 1964½ through 1967 Mustang was the “K-code” four-barrel-carbureted 289-cu.in. V-8, and just 13,231 cars were so equipped from the factory. It’s long been a favorite with fans of first-generation Mustangs, and now, you can build your own functioning version, in 1:3 scale. Sized roughly 7 x 10½ x 10 inches, this officially licensed model engine replicates the 271-hp K-code in great detail, with approximately 200 plug- and screw-together clear and colored plastic components that require no glue to assemble. While it is not suited for children under age 14 years because of small parts and the technical ability it requires to build, this V-8 — suggested to come together in 3 hours — is…

KISSIMMEE RESULTS Mecum’s first auction of 2021 took place in Kissimmee, Florida, in early January. With $122.8 million in total sales, the event set a record for the company and delivered an 89-percent sell-through rate. The top sale was Carroll Shelby’s 1965 427 Cobra, CSX3178, owned by Shelby from the day of assembly to the day he died. It was one of only five 427 Cobras finished in Charcoal Gray, and had been the subject of a ground-up restoration in 2019, completed by Legendary Motorcar Company. It had the original body and chassis, with an aluminum-head 427 side-oiler engine mated to Toploader four-speed manual transmission. After enthusiastic bidding, Shelby’s personal Cobra sold for $5,940,000. Also selling within Mecum’s top-10 was a 1971 Plymouth ’Cuda convertible, one of just 17 with…

RODS AND CUSTOMS ARE HOT WITH BUYERS As hardcore hot-rod enthusiasts will tell you, the real genesis of democratic American performance cars came well before the advent of Ford’s flathead V-8, originating with stripped-down, hopped-up, homemade Model T speedsters. So those hot rods (that label actually a post-WWII term, according to staff expert David Conwill) built in the first half of the last century may have inspired the postwar performance blitz that fueled this magazine. “While not traditional muscle cars in a sense that they weren’t manufactured in the ’60s or ’70s, custom V-8-powered hot rods and street rods really were part of the driving force that made Detroit want to build muscle cars in the first place,” Auctions Editor Terry Shea says. “Hemmings Auctions has shown over the last…