Table of contents for October 2022 in Hot Rod

@john.mcgann ❱Last month, I pondered the question if a Volvo could be a hot rod. This month, people are no doubt asking what an airplane is doing on the cover of HOT ROD. I think that is an easier case to make. It’s a home-built aircraft with a supercharged big-block Chevy crammed within the cowling. It’s pretty crazy. Lots of people asked me how I found out about Rod Bower’s Stewart S-51 replica, and the answer is simple: social media. One of my saved searches on Instagram is #bigblockchevy, so I generally see most things with that hashtag. The plane piqued my curiosity immediately, and I couldn’t believe it was here in California, just a few hours north of me. It took some coordinating, but we were able to schedule…

You can picture the scene, climbing into a scale P-51 Mustang, hearing the cackle of the exhaust that is close to that distinct unmuffled cacophony of a Merlin V12. Once in the air, you can narrow your eyes just a touch and you’re there—in a flight of P-51s taking on the Hun in the sun. Not all hot rods have four wheels and a steering wheel. Some invest that yearning for the thrill of acceleration and squeeze that fantasy inside the fuselage of a P-51 Mustang warbird. That was Rod Bower’s dream—to feel what it must have been like to sweep the skies of the enemy behind the stick of the most famous fighter aircraft of World War II. But with the price tag of a real North American P-51…

Stamped S.O. 2151, which stands for “Shop Order”, on a plate under the hood, this was the “proposal car” for the 1955 Corvette. In early 1954, Harley Earl’s famous Art & Colour Section saw the pale yellow body of Motorama show car EX-129 mounted to a 1954 chassis with engine and running gear. EX-129 was one of the one-piece, pre-production bodies, and it was common practice back then to use one body for multiple jobs. Their mission was to create the proposal car for management to view what the 1955 model should look like—the first Corvette with a V8. “This car was stripped, and I mean it was stripped, in the 1950s,”Billy Jay Espich said.How does anybody do that to a real Corvette prototype? CONCEPT DESIGN Revisions started with new…

❱Painting is easier than ever before. That may sound counterintuitive, but it’s true. Even with so many more sophisticated colors, different degrees of gloss, the multiple different and new materials that cars and trucks are made from, and the high standards that the OE’s apply to their finishes, it’s true that there are much better tools and more accessible training than has ever been available. I started out as a professional repair and refinish technician in the early ’90s, and technology was simply not as good as it is today. Despite some people harkening back to the “good ol’ days”, we had to contend with things like lead in the paint, minimal training opportunities, and very little protective equipment. I wanted to share some of these details with you, just…

Email us at hotrod@motortrend.com ❱Does anyone remember Dodge’s “Mayor of Truckville” Ram pickup truck magazine, TV, and radio advertising campaign of the early 2000s? It was the dawn of the 21st century; the “big rig” styled 1994-up Ram pickup trucks were giving Ford and GM a good fight, and I was a tech editor right here at HOT ROD magazine. My tenure at HRM ran from Tuesday, August 19, 1997, to Tuesday, January 20, 2004, and happily, during my direct involvement in 77 issues of HRM, I was there to witness the dawn of the Gen III Hemi dynasty. This is the story of the Hot Rod Hemi Ram project of 2001 and 2002. To help prime the pump for the 2003 launch of the so-called 5.7 Liter Hemi Magnum…

With slick features and a beautiful silhouette, the 1962 “bubbletop” Chevrolets are cars enthusiasts lust after—Impala, Biscayne, or Bel Air, the design is timeless. Add 409 power, and the desire to own one goes through the roof. In ’62, 409-powered cars were piloted by drag racing greats and were even the subject of a popular song you may have heard. Michigander Bob Phelps, now 83, had just left the Air Force in 1962 and was racing a new Corvette. Fast cars were everything to him, and his Chevrolet was a quick one; Bob won his class at the ’62 NHRA U.S. Nationals. But not long after, racing was put on hold for a while, as business came first. “I was a kid on the street. I had a ’49 Ford,…

This year marks the ninth season of Optima’s Search for the Ultimate Street Car presented by Advance Auto Parts, and the season opener at the high banks of Charlotte Motor Speedway offered a first look at some new changes for the series. For the first time ever, the series will run alongside SpeedTour, which is highlighted at many stops by the Trans Am series and SVRA vintage races, but also includes International GT and Formula Regional Americas championship racing, among other events. That means when you come to see the ultimate street cars compete in 2022, you may also be treated to exciting wheel-to-wheel racing action from other professional series, as well as incredible vintage cars, and a rather sizable car show put on by the folks from Hagerty. Alignment…

❱We may see a ton of big-block Chevys around here, but nothing gets our attention faster than when a real-deal Hemi rolls into the dyno room. And no, we’re not talking about one of them newfangled Hemi mills found in modern rides—this here is the legendary Hemi that people think about when they hear those four letters pronounced together. Engine Masters co-host and top-dog at Westech Performance, Steve Brulé, knows what’s cool, so when this 511-inch Hemi rolled through the dyno cell he made sure to get us the big-displacement details. Sources AR Engineering; arengineering.com BHJ Dynamics; 510.797.6780; harmonicdampers.com Callies; 419.435.2711; callies.com Comp Cams; 800.999.0853; compcams.com CP Carrillo; 949.567.9000; cp-carrillo.com Holley; 877.712.0002; holley.com Milodon; 805.577.5950; milodon.com Molnar Technologies; 616.940.4640; molnartechnologies.com Stage V Engineering; 909.594.8383; stagev.com SuperFlow; 262.252.4301; superflow.com Westech Performance…

❱Yes, the LS swap has been done to death, but here’s an interesting question: Is it still an LS swap if you’re only using part of the LS engine? Well, we’re here to find out with an engine build that is so far out in left field that it occupies another ZIP code. Enter Ken Hutchison and his out-of-the-box 300-inch Ford inline-six engine build. As Hutchison told us, “My interest in classic inline six-cylinder engines was sparked in 2017 when my dad pulled his 1985 Chevrolet S10 pickup from storage. He had stuffed a Chevy 292 straight-six into it, even though the S10 was only a few years old at the time. He wanted to get it running, and I got that, but the engine swap led me to the…

Fabulous Restorations, located in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, has built a solid reputation for completing stunning restorations. George Haddad and Fabulous recently completed a 1966 Penske L88 prototype tribute Corvette that pays homage to Roger Penske’s first race as a team owner at the 1966 24 Hours of Daytona. Prior to his career transition to businessman, Penske was an accomplished racing driver from 1958 to 1964. During that time, he raced Corvette Grand Sports, winning the 1963 feature race at Nassau, driving Grand Sport No. 004. Two years later, he secured a breathtaking Nassau victory driving Grand Sport No. 005, defeating a 390ci Shelby Cobra driven by the late Ken Miles. It was after this victory that he retired from racing. After his retirement, he purchased George McKean Chevrolet near Philadelphia,…

There’s a dragstrip in Maine, just a few miles south of Bangor, called Winterport Dragway. It has the flavor of the hundreds of regional strips that once covered the country, and it’s doing its best to keep grassroots drag racing alive in New England. On August 19-21, 2022, the second running of the Pinetree Jamboree is coming back to Winterport Dragway for three days of old-time drag racing. Last year, more than 50 traditional roadsters, coupes, sedans, and pickups showed up at the first Pinetree Jamboree for three full days of heads-up drag racing exclusively for flathead-powered hot rods. Presented by the Tornados Car Club of New England, the event brings back the vibe of drag racing’s earliest days with a unique event for period-built four-, six-, eight-, and 12-cylinder…

❱Tire shaving, or truing, is something that you don’t hear much about these days, and it’s increasingly difficult to find any tire shops that even know what it is, let alone how to do it. Yet, with many hot rodders opting for bias-ply tires, and just as many people going racing, it’s more essential than ever. Few bias-ply tires are perfectly round or well-balanced, and if you want your traditional hot rod or racecar to perform as well as it can and should, it pays to shave and balance them. The same is true for truck tires fitted to dualies and recreational vehicles. When I worked at So-Cal Speed Shop, we used to take our roadsters to Caldwell Tire on the famed Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena, California, where they had…