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.
In Jersey they were vent windows
Yeah, point taken.... still, there’s something scary-fun about having to lift your elbow and knee over the inside kerb as you apex a corner that you just can’t get in a car. Especially when you’re within a few feet of 3 or 4 buddies all vying for the fastest line.
I should never have strayed into this thread, now my throttle wrist is twitching.... you guys are killin’ me!
;-)
and my 1970 Sports Satellite! Cragar SS wheels...oh yeah!
We just got an ‘84 Mustang convertible. My husband and I love it; our 17 year old son doesn’t have the same appreciation.
I had a 71 Cutlass with a Rocket 350. Fine highway car.
Cars I have owned..I look back and realize how stupid I was in my younger days for letting some of these go.
Ford
62 Falcon
65 mustang
68 torino fast back
85 and 88 mustang fast backs
chevy
68 nova
71 camaro
75 camaro
85 Iroc Z
Pontiac
79 formula
Mopar-
73 duster
73 dart swinger **Slant 6 225 bulletproof motors**
**now have kids and drive a Jeep cherokee***
My cousin drove an AMC gremlin with a 304 V8 with after market dual head scoops...what a sight
Duster lives in the garage.....
If it came with the BULLETPROOF slant 6 225...I guarantee she will fire right back up.....
The 400 in it was a GOAT motor.
That would go along way towards explaining the reliability.
"The Flying Brick". That little rascal could MOVE.
It was like the Deacon's One-Hoss Shay, it eventually fell apart all at once, all over. We gave the carcass to our mechanic, I don't know what happened to it.
Red Barchetta comes true...
If you've a mind you can still make some very HiPo cars today. Think supercharging here. A bit expensive but you can pull 500hp out of just about anything decent these days. Cost about 5K. If you have never had 500+ Hp under your foot you simply cannot imagine how much fun it is. If costly.
Oops, chain.
It applies to the cars used to entice sexy chicks. You're welcome. :>)
My Daddy had a really nice Olds 442. It was a mid to late 60’s model. I’m not sure which. It was very nice. I still miss my very first car. It was a ‘70 model Camaro. It was green with a green vinyl top. Very pretty. I wish that I had never sold it. Didn’t want to, had to. Still regret it.
He was looking over at my friend reving the engine and wanting to race, my friend didn't really want to race his dad's car, but he goosed the throttle a few times, had an automatic transmission, he accidentally let up on the brake just briefly and the Chevy moved about an two inches.
The guy in the '32 Ford was watching us and not the light, he thought the light had changed and he stood on it, flew into the intersection, got hit from two directions at the same time, was thrown out of the drivers side window but his feet hooked onto the inside of the window and he didn't hit the ground. When the dust settled he was unhurt, Ford was ruined, which was a shame as it was a fine car.
Cop rolled up and gave my friend a ticket for "racing" even though we weren't, hauled the other guy off to jail. I bet his insurance wasn't too happy either. No one was hurt in the wreck, which was blind luck.
That Chevy with the little 283 was a real screamer in its day and my first "real" car was a '57 Chevy when I got out of the army a few years later.
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