Posted on 06/08/2009 5:28:28 AM PDT by Kaslin
In the summer of 1980, I was looking forward to turning 16 and getting a driver’s license. All of my friends were looking forward to driving but none as much as me. My friends would be driving used Mazdas and Toyotas that got good gas mileage. But my dad bought me a 1970 GTO. He didn’t care that it got nine miles to the gallon. It looked like it was going thirty miles an hour when it was just sitting in the driveway.
Even though that old GTO was fast it had worn hydraulic lifters that were sucking away horsepower and badly wearing down the stock Pontiac cam shaft. Nonetheless, I put the pedal to the floor and burned rubber every chance I got – that is, as long as the Houston Police were nowhere in sight.
One night on Highway Three I began to hear an unfamiliar sound just after I floored the accelerator. I didn’t realize it at the time but I had merely dented the flywheel cover running over something in the road. But the sound it was making – coupled with the fact that it started just after I hit the accelerator – made me think I had spun a bearing on the crank shaft.
So dad and I went into the garage and pulled out the motor. After it was secure on the engine lift we could see the source of the noise. And we knew we could just pull off the flywheel cover and hammer out the dent to fix the problem. But we also knew it would be so much more fun to rebuild the old motor. My dad must have figured that if I was going to finish at the bottom of my class academically I might as well have the fastest car among the 3300 students at Clear Lake High School.
For weeks, after I got home from school – and my dad got home from work – we toiled away on that engine. First we started with the internal restoration. A Crane Blazer camshaft was the first high-performance extra installed. That went with new rings and bearings, new lifters, and a nice valve job – on 10-to-1 heads with 2.11-inch intake valves.
Then we got to all the really unnecessary aftermarket items. A Holly double pump carburetor sat on a new Edelbrock manifold. Headmond headers ran just below the stock chrome valve covers. We topped it off with a small chrome air filter that allowed people to better see what we had beneath the hood (plus, you could hear it sucking in air from inside the passenger compartment). Finally, there were nice Thrush mufflers to let people know we were coming long before we got there.
When we were done, my friend Jim Duke joked that he hoped his dad would hurry up and have a midlife crisis - so he could build him a hot rod, too. My buddy Terry Cohn said I had the coolest dad in town. Terry has always been wise beyond his years.
That GTO had other benefits, too. The first time I asked Jane out on a date she said she’d go because she heard I had a cool car. When I picked her up she said “This is it?” She was disappointed that it wasn’t much to look at. But after I laid waste to a few Corvettes and Trans Ams she changed her mind.
Those nights in Houston were legendary. Like the time I buried the speedometer at 140 on Interstate 45 on the way to Galveston. Or the time I beat James Armand’s 1970 Camaro in a race up Falcon Pass. That night, I took everyone’s money on the Clear Lake High School soccer team. Those were the days.
But my reign as the king of Falcon Pass would end in less than a year. Billy Peters had a cool dad, too. He bought him a 1967 Camaro with a 427 engine. Billy had all the extras put on that engine, too. And he topped it off with something I didn’t have; namely, a 4.11 posi-traction rear axle.
People always said that car would be the death of me. But, ironically, it saved my life – along with my buddy Wes Armour - in the summer of 1984. A fellow tried to end an argument using a 12-gauge shotgun in the parking lot of Burger King. We left the guy standing, literally, in a cloud of tire smoke. His Jeep wasn’t going to catch up with that GTO.
A few years later, cancer – under the vinyl top, in the trunk, and behind the wheel wells – would claim that old GTO. We would take the Holly and the Edelbrock and bolt it on top of the 400 engine in our mint condition 1973 Grand Am.
But things were never the same. In 1971, Congress would put a halt to the golden era of great muscle cars in America. Emissions requirements would flood the market with low compression, two-barrel, single exhaust versions of the old cars we used to love. They were merely shadows of their former selves.
Now President Obama is determining the compensation of GM employees. He’s getting rid of board members at GM and replacing them with those of his choosing. He’s preparing to impose new fuel economy requirements. He’s even using the IRS to make people buy cars they really don’t want.
Congress started steering the auto industry in the wrong direction many years ago. This new president is merely pushing down the accelerator and keeping steady hold upon the wheel. Meanwhile, our memories of the glory days, like so many youthful dreams, are fading in the rear view mirror.
Yes. I guess that window was called different things in different places. We here in NY called them fly windows. Great feature; I miss it.
Regards,
My memories aren’t so distant in this regard.
A few years ago I helped my father restore a 1957 Chevy Bel Air 2 door sports coup. (Yup, you got it, no post)
We didn’t put a stock 283 in there, instead we opted for a 330hp 4 bolt main 350 that came out of a 25th anniversary edition Corvette, teamed up with a Tubo Hydramatic 350 transmission.
We finished it off in a candy apple red pearl coat on the body and a white pearl coat roof.
She is a beauty
Mine was a 1968 Chevelle SS396 Convertible for $3150 (The sticker price was $3800).
Oh well. I understand a ghetto baby carrige (i.e.; Target shopping cart) piloted by a metrosexual on roller blades will make a fine 21st century equivalent - when the modern young man picks up his male date and heads for the tofu hut for a Boca burger.
Is that still legal?
I heard Rush shilling for GM. Someone has a sense of humor.
You know, I hadn't really thought about it, but now that you mention it under an Obamalamadingdong administration it's probably a capital offense......
It does bring back the good old days and I really get a kick out of watching Pinks All Out.
Rush had a advertising contract with GM, so it is not shilling, but money that makes Rush comment.
Our neighbor's son was killed a year ago when his Z350 hit a tree at 80mph. Nobody quite knows what happened but he is still dead and the family has been devastated ever since. This is the time of year when it happens, teens standing at the threshold of college and the next chapter of life, end up closing the book. Sad.
OK.....I did not save a one of them. Stupid me.
1-!961 Chevy Impala, 4spd, 348 cid.
2- 1966 Chevy Chevelle SS, 4spd, 396cid
3- 1967 Chevy Nova SS, 4spd, 327cid.
But, I re-bought some nice GM super cars. Happy ending!
My muscle car as a teenager was this street sleeper:
'62 Studebaker Lark. Had the big police pursuit motor in it with a Holley 4bbl. Would pass anything but a gas pump. Brakes were dicey (the old single-shoe drum brakes all round) and the steering was l-o-o-o-s-e. But it would go.
My dad wound up selling it to a couple in California who are going to do a ground-up restoration on it.
140 mph on I45? This guy is very lucky he didn’t kill someone.
Mine had the white interior, though.
Promoting something for money is shilling. I have no problem with it, in fact I like the irony.
The point I was trying to make was that GM, in regards to he history of America, has taken on a status not unlike a person and or patriot.
Like the Pennsylvania Railroad and Pan American :-)
My idiot son wrecked his car TWICE in the week between graduating high school and going into the USMC.
Thankfully he is not a bad driver and both were minor crunches (although the bills were not minor). But a little more speed and a little more miscalculation and he could easily have wrapped himself around a telephone pole with fatal results.
I think those nice friendly DIs at Parris Island will probably instill more sense into his thick head than I ever could.
It already has.
Hear, hear! Makes me think of my high school's parking lot. Y'know, by the time that '79 Firebird rolled off the assembly line, most of the "good" '57 Chevys were already in the hands of collectors, restorers and hot-rodders. I remember seeing an old lady driving a '57 2-door BelAir back in the early '80s. The car was in *very* rough shape, but she had cardboard signs that read: "CAR NOT FOR SALE!!" taped to the insides of the rear quarter windows.
Zero's legacy will not be a kind one if he manages to push the '55-'57 Chevys, early Mustangs, Corvettes and other beloved classics off the roads permanently.
I got 15 MPH. My father wouldn’t buy the 442. I use to kick the butt of a GT-500 Shelby.
My brother had one at that time too. It was kind of copper colored. Pretty car and could move. I had a 1969 firebird and would give my eye teeth for it again. I loved that car.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
