Hemmings Muscle Machines March 2024

“West Coast car mags would feature modified muscle cars that were referred to as ‘canyon carvers’” In much the same way I can still remember the first time I felt the brutal acceleration of a hotrodded muscle car (it was the neighbor’s ’70 Duster 340 when I was about 8 years old), I can also recall the first time I felt the lateral force of a hard-cornering car being pushed through a turn. In that second instance, the car was an MGB, which makes sense as sports cars were the vehicles expected to handle twisty roads with aplomb; muscle cars were built to go fast in a straight line. But that blast as a 12-year-old passenger through a sweeping turn in the not-so-powerful MG was almost as exhilarating as the…

MUSCLEPALOOZA 2024 EVENTS MUSCLEPALOOZA RETURNS FOR 2024 WITH NEW EVENTS Back in 2004, as Hemmings was enjoying the success of its newly minted magazine dedicated to the American muscle car, an idea was hatched. Why not hold a gathering to celebrate the performance efforts of Detroit, bringing together readers and other fans of performance machines? And what better place to bring muscle cars together than the setting of their natural habitat: The drag strip. The very first Musclepalooza was held on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, 2004, and it was an even bigger success than anyone involved could have hoped. Even the track’s management was surprised, but it was clear we’d landed on an idea with legs. After a repeat performance in 2005 with a similarly strong turnout, Hemmings…

Letter of the Month: Mach Speed I saw my first Mach 1 in 1969 and asked my dad what it was. He told me it was a Mustang and I fell in love. In 1977, I bought my first Mach 1 for $1,200 —I worked three jobs and paid my own high school tuition while making $2.15 an hour. I trashed that Mach at 104 mph. Luckily, my mother had the priest bless the car when I bought it — I was drinking whisky and smoking pot. Gas was 78 cents a gallon when I was a kid, and you could still get 104 leaded octane. I had my last Mach 1 restored. She’s a beauty — Raven Black with red stripes. Dave CullenVia email T/A TIDBITS The column “Tales…

MODIFIEDSPOTLIGHT: Muscle That Turns HIGH-PERFORMANCE cars from the muscle car era are sometimes restored well beyond the scope of practicality. Cars that carry a nameplate like Z28 are even more likely to be placed on a pedestal, and no longer used for their intended purpose of going fast. For muscle cars, going fast usually meant in a straight line, but back in the 1990s, there were some enthusiastic gearheads who equipped their muscle cars with road-race-style suspension and kept them street legal for a new mixture of extreme handling capability and highway manners. This build style got the name Pro Touring, and it has been inspiring creative muscle car builds ever since. The Pro Touring segment of the hobby is certainly the most active, as the cars are built to…

ON LOCATION IT’S BEEN NEARLY 30 YEARS since Dan Jensen, Dennis Jensen, Lyndon Hughes, and a few other loyalists banded together to pull vintage muscle cars off the show field and launch them down the drag strip. Soon after, the Pure Stock Muscle Car Drag Race (PSMCDR) quickly grew into a must-attend event for owners and enthusiasts across the U.S. and Canada — a throwback kaleidoscope of color, horsepower, and tire smoke. “The goal from the very beginning was to give owners a place to enjoy their cars the way they were always intended,” says Dan Jensen. He notes that his trio gets about four hours of sleep for the entire month of September, as they and a few volunteers (most from the West Michigan chapter of POCI) organize and…

BACK IN THE SPRING OF 2022, we set out to launch a new project car build that would be the subject of a video series. We wanted to focus on a vehicle that was widely attainable, which at the time meant that it probably couldn’t be something from the original muscle era, especially since we wanted to start with a running, driving example. However, we knew we could find a subject from the ’80s or ’90s, a time when factory performance was back and on the rise; this is also a period that collectors are starting to embrace. Naturally, we thought of the Fox-platform Mustang, but our $10,000 budget soon proved to be a challenge—good 5.0 cars were climbing right past that point. Meanwhile, there were still lots of third-generation…