Hemmings Muscle Machines October 2022

tmcgean@hemmings.com • Instagram @tmcgean Messing with engines is something I’ve enjoyed since I was a teen… Wrenching for the Win We’ve been delving deeper into a project involving one of GM’s GEN-III small-block “LS” engines, getting an example ready for some dyno testing, and it’s been a learning experience. Though I’ve been interested in the LS since it debuted as the power source for the 1997 Corvette, I’ve never actually gotten inside of one until now. Messing with engines is something I’ve enjoyed since I was a teen, and for better or worse, I’ve often just taken the dive into unknown waters without giving it a second thought. Back when we were budding gearheads, not yet old enough for our driver’s licenses, my friends and I would tear into the…

As enthusiasts, we want unbridled power. As a company with international reach that must operate within the rules, Stellantis has to be a good corporate citizen and work toward its commitments to slice its carbon emissions in half by 2030, and to be Carbon Net Zero by 2038. At the same time, it doesn’t want to ruin performance or the driving experience. Can we have both? Stellantis’ new Hurricane engine suggests that we can. Hurricane is a gasoline-fueled, DOHC, direct-injection twin-turbo inline six, based on the existing two-liter four-cylinder currently found in several Jeep products. Two variations will be available: a standard output version optimized for fuel economy and offering more than 400 horsepower and 450 lb-ft of torque, and a high-output version said to offer more than 500 horsepower…

Letter of the Month: Just Like Jim I have been a subscriber to HMM since the beginning. I have read many articles written by Jim McGowan (even before he joined this great magazine). I loved the story about his Reef Turquoise ’65 GTO convertible (“Flexibly Stock,” HMM #227, July 2022) as it uncannily parallels the ownership of my Reef Turquoise ’66 GTO convertible. In September of 1964, while Jim was buying his first ’65 GTO, I was drooling over ’65 GTOs in the showroom at Paradise Pontiac while walking to high school. I knew then I would one day own a GTO. In 1986, I bought my first: a ’66 GTO hardtop. I wanted a convertible like my first car, and in 1988 I found a very original, low-mileage Reef…

MODIFIEDSPOTLIGHT: Mopar Muscle MIKE HERNDEN’S 1970 GTX WAS A STUNNER. It was a local-area car since new, with its original 440+6 engine, and he’d lusted after it for ages. After 39 years with the B-body, and much persistent nudging, the owner finally relented and sold the car to Mike. “It was an amazing-looking car, in Tor-Red with white stripes and a white interior,” he says. “And it was original, right down to the carburetors, but it needed a restoration.” Mike spent the next four years on the painstaking project, ensuring every last fastener was fastidiously fawned over in his quest to make the GTX as correct as possible. The work paid off, as the car drew plenty of rewarding attention from aficionados who assumed it was a professional job. “It…

I’ve been a Mopar guy my whole life. My first car was a 1969 Dodge that I transformed into a Super Bee, and over the years, I’ve done it all: modified street cars, drag racing, restored muscle cars. All of it. This Barracuda provided the opportunity to build something really creative that my wife and I could enjoy more than anything else I’ve built. There are still a couple of things we want to do with it, but it’s exactly the car we’ve wanted, and we couldn’t be happier with the results.…

STOCK FORD PERFORMANCE in 1964, especially before the Mustang came out at mid-year, meant one thing to most people: The 427. That 7.0-liter behemoth, winkingly rated at 425 horsepower like all of its top-dog competitors, was derived from the 1958-vintage FE series of big-block V-8 engines. The FE’s were originally intended for sedate-duty hauling around increasingly beefy Ford and Edsel passenger cars in 332, 352, and 361-cu.in. sizes. The 1957-declared ceasefire in the horsepower wars didn’t last, however, and for model year 1960, Ford started reinforcing the FE series for duty on the NASCAR oval tracks and quarter-mile dragstrips nationwide. Winning there meant sales to performance-oriented consumers and a 360-hp iteration of the 352 was the first High-Performance version of Ford’s original big-block. From there, the tuning technology and displacement…