Hemmings Muscle Machines December 2024

"That’s a dangerous offer to make to someone like me who never stops searching on-line postings for old cars and trucks." A friend of mine has some property here in town and lately he’s been clearing a parcel to put up a storage building for his car projects. He wants to keep the car clutter away from his house, so the new building will be tucked out of sight behind a tree line on the property. While he was showing me his progress, I noticed a small section across from the site marked out for the building, already covered with gravel and looking like the perfect place to stash a car… or three or four. When I jokingly thanked him for making some space for me to hide my upcoming junk car acquisitions, he didn’t…

$54,425. What does that money get you these days on a new-car lot? At a Dodge store, that’s most of the way toward a leftover wide-body Scat Pack Charger, or maybe a nicely equipped Durango R/T. Or it will get you this: a 2024 Dodge Hornet R/T Plus Track Pack and Blacktop eAWD. (That’s what it’s called on the sticker, anyway; the hatch lid only allows that it’s a Hornet R/T, and the Dodge name does not appear anywhere on the body.) We gotta be honest: Small crossovers aren’t Production Line’s usual quarry. The Hornet R/T has a 1.3-liter four, it relies on hybrid technology, and despite the all-American badge and the squinty Charger-esque face, it’s built in Italy. (It shares its bones with something called the Alfa Romeo Tonale,…

Letter of the Month: Worth The Wait My fascination with the AMC brand began in 1981 when I was a junior in high school and bought a ’69 Javelin to replace the ’71 Mach 1 Mustang I had just sold. Fast forward to 2006, when I got an opportunity to purchase a 1968 AMX that had been in a barn for 20 years, had only 81,000 miles, and was almost 100-percent rust-free. The car even had the original AM radio and had not been hacked up. I snatched it up for the asking price of $5,000 and didn’t even haggle. I spent the next 13 years doing a rotisserie restoration on the car. However, I didn’t go back to original. Instead, I followed the “Day 2” motif and modified…

AS LONG AS THERE HAVE BEEN car shows there have been trailer queens—the spotless, meticulously detailed rides that have neither bug bites nor stone chips. They’re the cars with cubic potential under the hood, but not a speck of rubber on their hind quarters. It’s easy to dismiss those cars and even deride the owners as enthusiasts who’d rather wipe down a fender than bang gears. Dennis Stiffler used to think like that, but then he found himself on the other side of the velvet rope. His freshly built 1969 Camaro Pro Tourer was immaculate; that’s when the trailer-queen thing washed over him. “I never thought I’d be that guy, but there I was — reluctant to drive my car,” Dennis says. “It cost more to build than I anticipated…

THE ’60 WERE ONE WILD, ECLECTIC, and anything-but-subtle decade. Headline news, culture, design, and pure national attitude collided in a nuclear blast, merging the fundamental sciences into one cohesive ball of reform and reinvention. The auto industry was aware of what was happening at home and abroad and strived to keep up with the stylistic trends emerging in the marketplace. As the younger generation turned its eyes to the flash and power of the muscle car movement, the American automakers shifted gears and ramped up to keep up with the young consumers asking for faster and more vibrant offerings. Ford, Chrysler, GM, and AMC all beckoned the new “youth market” with the development of pony cars and an ever-growing assortment of high-powered intermediate models. But getting young buyers into brand-new cars…

TECHSPOTLIGHT: Restomods AFTER YEARS OF FEATURING OVERDRIVE-transmission swaps, we don’t need to waste words extolling the highway-cruising virtues of an upgraded gearbox, but when it comes to adapting the popular Tremec five- and six-speed transmissions, there have been compromises. For five-speeds, the TKO-500 and TKO-600 work well with old-school small-blocks, but aren’t well-suited for the higher-revving capabilities of LS and LT engines. When it comes to six-speeds, there are basically two choices: The production-based T-56 and aftermarket-intended and T-56-based Magnum. Used T-56 units are getting scarce, and for most vintage Chevys, the shifter location typically requires modifying the transmission tunnel. The relatively bulky Magnum also requires alterations to the tunnel to create room for the Magnum’s wide case. Honestly, it takes more than just a little trimming to fit a…