Hemmings Muscle Machines September 2023

...making the source of power attractive as well as functional seems to make sense. Highlighting an engine on our cover is a bit of a departure for us, but when the idea was raised in a brainstorming session, it seemed to catch on with the group quickly. No real surprise there — the concept certainly isn’t new for car magazines, especially those aimed at muscle car fans. Going through the process of developing this month’s cover reminded me of my fascination with the details of the mechanical bits that live under the hood. Those thoughts took me right back to the summer vacation of my 15th year. Somehow, my parents had agreed to let me buy my first car before I could get my license, the idea being that I’d…

Doubtless you’ve heard that Chevrolet’s rear-drive pony car, the Camaro, is going away — again — for the second time this millennium. Regardless of the car, once the sales dry up and the model goes away, an inevitable surge of special editions turns up at your local dealer. Before the Camaro name is used on some flavor of electrified SUV, Chevrolet has shown the good sense of introducing a couple of nice-knowing-you special editions. The first is the 2024 Chevy Camaro ZL1 Garage 56 Edition. If it looks familiar, it’s because Hendrick Motorsports, NASCAR, Goodyear, and Chevrolet fielded one that looked a bit like it, which just ran at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The NASCAR-spec racer completed 285 laps — more than 2,400 miles — around the 8.476-mile…

Letter of the Month: Pony Car Family Thanks so much for a great magazine – I’m a longtime subscriber. I couldn’t believe my luck when I got the July issue to see that the Shelby GT500 Mustang and a Pontiac Formula were both featured! I owned a 2008 GT California Special convertible, and my mom had a 1976 Pontiac Firebird Formula she used to let me drive in high school. I also recently visited the Shelby museum in Las Vegas and thoroughly enjoyed the story of the GT500 and of course the Buyer’s Guide on the same in the issue. I’m not sure though when the Buyer’s Guide was written or where you got the selling prices, but unfortunately those figures are probably half of what current prices…

SPECIAL FEATURE SPOTLIGHT: Engine Power IN THE WORLD OF muscle cars, the engine is often a focal point. If high performance is the intent, then it’s the engine that will have the most impact. Detroit had already been painting engines in bright colors and occasionally adding chrome and polished bits to dress up the power source in the ’50s, and some high-end luxury cars had used similar measures to make the machinery more attractive as far back as the 1920s. Hot rodders took efforts to dress up their engines well beyond what any of the factories had done — extensive use of plating and polishing, finely applied paint finishes, braided aircraft plumbing, and so on. Many of our pages in HMM are dedicated to restoration efforts that strive to accurately…

THERE ARE A VARIETY OF FACTORS that contribute to the desirability of a classic muscle car. The most important include rarity, quality, originality, mileage, and history. Few, if any, cars have all the attributes cited here, and all sorts of combinations of the above factors exist. You can find a high-mileage car with a related engine replacement that was well cared for and restored to a high standard. Conversely, you might find a low-mileage car that was seriously damaged early in life and has sat in a barn for decades. The combinations are nearly endless, but if you’re looking for something specific, you might have to take what you can find. Mopar collector Tom Lembeck was in the latter position in the early 1980s, as he was specifically looking for…

THIS PAST JUNE, the famed 24 Hours of Le Mans (or 24 Heures du Mans, in the native tongue) stormed through the French countryside around the Circuit de la Sarthe, on public roads, and celebrated the centenary of the event. Le Mans (pronounced LE-moh to us Yankees) is automotive endurance racing at its finest, with technical innovation intertwined with durability at its core. Trial and error. Overcoming obstacles. Powering through. Racers plying their trade there fiddled with aerodynamics as early as 1925. Fog lamps appeared a year later. Radial tires in ’51. Fuel injection in ’52. Disc brakes a year after that. Turbocharging in ’76. A move to renewable fuels starting last year. While these innovations may not have been spawned at Le Mans, all of them proved their worth…