A little history...
October 7th, 2011, 07:45 AM
#1
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Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: Indianapolis, IN
Posts: 473
A little history...
Well im bored and i like to write and with the way this site is becoming a second home to me i feel like i should share a little. If its an interesting story awesome! If not, eh, it will fall to the abyss of out-dated-threaddom and wont bug anybody 
haha. So here goes...
Ive always loved muscle cars more than any other type. Im still rather young (twenty) so everyone i grew up knowing was into the "tuner" cars. Not me though. Im a very old-fashioned kind of person. I believe in respectability, morality, the true meaning of "made in America", freedom, originality, basically all the things this world may be missing out on these days. I dig old school music better than this untalented noise the record labels put together these days, my main tunes are AC/DC, Zeppelin, Maiden, Alice Cooper, Quiet Riot, Van Halen, Def Leppard i think you get it haha. So when it came to cars of course i was more of an old school enthusiest. Ironicly the one horrible series of movies that got most kids into tuner cars jump started my interest in muscle. This, as much as it embarasses me to say, is Fast and the Furious. I loved how these well-built tuner cars had to cheat to keep up with stock or mild muscle cars. Plus there's a few main things ive always loved about muscle and i'll list them here:
1. Their styling is beautiful. This was an era when workers and companies took pride in what they built. These vehicles were rolling works of art built more for enjoyment than a monotary profit.
2. The monsterous power behind these beasts is so straight-forward, simple, and well just fun. No bolt on power-adders, no big high tech computer tuning, nothing trying to govern itself or drive the car for you. Its a LOT of car, done all by the motor itself, and its not going to whine or buzz or flash annoying lights when you bang on it. Bluntly, and maybe somewhat cruely, "it will kill you before you kill it"
3. Theres a certain freedom in these cars' simplicity. Sure its nice to have all the creature comforts. Heated seats, 12-speaker stereos, GPS, all this stuff is great but what ever happened to the fun of just whingin' it? That "who cares where we're going, lets enjoy the ride" thought seems lost on the newer cars. These classics just put you in a different, maybe more adventurous mindset.
Now for the second part of why im such a fan, as with most, it just runs in the family. Almost everyone has that one or more people they knew "back in the day" that had that amazing car that you just adored. You didnt know what it was, who made it, what its purpose was, you really didnt even know why you loved it but you did and thats all it took. For me this started with my neighbor's bright red immaculate 3rd gen Iroc-Z Camaro. This was the first car i ever fell in love with. I didnt know what it was, didnt know what it sounded like, didnt even know it was a performance car, but i loved the look of it, the appeal of it, and like i said, you cant even really describe the rest. I must have been between 8 or 10 years old but i knew this is what i wanted.
Years later that dream would come true with my current 91' RS Camaro. Much earlier than that however, a few years after my love affair with the Iroc, my older brother bought a 3rd gen Camaro. It was cool but it was a real beater with a 6-cyl and it didnt last long. After that he ended up with an 88' Firebird. That was most likely my 2nd love. It was also a 6-cyl and was an auto but i didnt know any better back then. To me it was the cool kid car. After that i started doing lots of research and learning as much as possible about these rolling works of art. You should have seen this little 14 year old spouting off about 440 Challengers and 427 Yenko Camaros. Only later would i find out how big of a muscle car family my family really was.
Soon i learned my mom used to have a 67' Rally Sport Camaro "it was red with hide-away headlights and didnt have a spoiler, i hate your father for selling that car" hahaha, i heard it a hundred times. My dad sold that car so he could keep his 70' or 71' Cougar XR7 which didnt last much longer. My uncle on my dad's side had a 79' Trans Am with a built Olds 403 and as my dad would say "that car was fast and scary as ****". That eventually got my dad to buy his current 81' Turbo Trans Am. Its still awaiting restoration but i took it upon myself to rip the back seat out and get the build sheet. Jackpot! An original Y-84 "bandit/special edition" Turbo T/A with WS6 package and 4-wheel disc. Yumm... Anyway, my uncle eventually sold that 79' T/A for a newer, more hip car, some of you may have heard of it, the unicorn of muscle cars known as the Turbo Buick Regal. Maybe one of the, if not THE, only cool non-V8 muscle cars ever built. He later traded that in for a mini-van. Yeah it was terrible but hey, back then it wasnt much cooler than an SS Cobalt so, as they say hindsight is always 20/20 haha.
Moving on to my mother's side of the family. She of course had the "67' Rally Sport Camaro with hide-away headlights and it didnt have a spoiler" which they nicknamed The Stagecoach because i guess it had terribly stiff suspension. My oldest uncle had a 67' 2-door fastback Impala SS327 (now one of my favorite cars and the only year of Impala i really like). My younger uncle had a car you all should be rather familiar with, a green 65' 330 Olds 442. He bought that car after the love of his life, and probly about the most legendary car in my family's muscle car lineage, was stolen and stripped for parts. This being his pride and joy 69' 4-speed 340-S fastback Barracuda. It had quite a few mods done to it and taller rear end gears and he had 2 blown out driveshafts to prove it. This uncle is my favorite to talk too about hot rods because as you can see he is like me and prefers off brands. He could have gotten a Camaro or Chevelle but he got a Plymouth and then later an Oldsmobile.
Now on to what got me on this course. So i was in high school, i had just gotten my 91' Camaro and it had a 305 V8 so i was pretty pleased and new i had one of the better cars in the lot. Until one day i walk outside and WHAAAA. A 1972 SUPER SPORT 454 CHEVELLE PARKED RIGHT NEXT TO MY BABY!?! I wasnt sure whether to be pissed, pleased, jealous. I loved the car but it still stings when you know you've been shown up. This car was mean too. I called it out the first day for being a clone, the first one to call it out (no rally gauges, auto column shifter, and a bench seat? c'mon, it had to have been a Malibu at one time) and i was right, but it didnt matter, clones never bothered me in fact i love clones because they look amazing, drive the same, and dont give you that nagging feeling that you might tear up a piece of history by driving it the way it was MEANT to be driven. This car was my 3rd love. It was in very very good shape, but not too good. And everyone knows what i mean by too good. Its great to have a pristine show car, they look amazing and you take such pride in it. But those cars have no soul. I love a good driver it has character, the car has an identity and isnt ashamed to show it. I respect that. This car had a few nicks and dings, but it had it where it counts. A built and cammed 454 ran through headers and cherry bombs. It was a mean, loud, obnoxious, king of the street. After a year of daydreaming over it i finally figured out the kid that drove it was in my class the entire time. *face palm*. One day he left and his parents gave the car to my good friend to rebuild the motor in it as a christmas present to the kid who owned it. He rebuilt it and once it was rebuilt drove it to break it in. That started my love affair with the A-body. This car was truely amazing. After the rebuild he started the motor in my school's auto shop running just headers and his friend felt the motor thumping away through the floor. His friend was on the complete opposite side of the school on the second floor. My friend would drive this car to work (Hardees, who paid him exactly what it cost to get the 7mpg behemoth to and from work) and when he'd drive into the lot the car would shake kitchen utensils off the walls. Soon through me he started dating my sister and we saw the car a lot more. We always knew when he showed up because it would sound and feel like a train was coming. Living next to railroad tracks we were used to it, but being from a big block Chevelle just made it that much cooler. I loved the car, as you can tell, and it set me off on my search for my own A-body.
haha. So here goes...Ive always loved muscle cars more than any other type. Im still rather young (twenty) so everyone i grew up knowing was into the "tuner" cars. Not me though. Im a very old-fashioned kind of person. I believe in respectability, morality, the true meaning of "made in America", freedom, originality, basically all the things this world may be missing out on these days. I dig old school music better than this untalented noise the record labels put together these days, my main tunes are AC/DC, Zeppelin, Maiden, Alice Cooper, Quiet Riot, Van Halen, Def Leppard i think you get it haha. So when it came to cars of course i was more of an old school enthusiest. Ironicly the one horrible series of movies that got most kids into tuner cars jump started my interest in muscle. This, as much as it embarasses me to say, is Fast and the Furious. I loved how these well-built tuner cars had to cheat to keep up with stock or mild muscle cars. Plus there's a few main things ive always loved about muscle and i'll list them here:
1. Their styling is beautiful. This was an era when workers and companies took pride in what they built. These vehicles were rolling works of art built more for enjoyment than a monotary profit.
2. The monsterous power behind these beasts is so straight-forward, simple, and well just fun. No bolt on power-adders, no big high tech computer tuning, nothing trying to govern itself or drive the car for you. Its a LOT of car, done all by the motor itself, and its not going to whine or buzz or flash annoying lights when you bang on it. Bluntly, and maybe somewhat cruely, "it will kill you before you kill it"
3. Theres a certain freedom in these cars' simplicity. Sure its nice to have all the creature comforts. Heated seats, 12-speaker stereos, GPS, all this stuff is great but what ever happened to the fun of just whingin' it? That "who cares where we're going, lets enjoy the ride" thought seems lost on the newer cars. These classics just put you in a different, maybe more adventurous mindset.
Now for the second part of why im such a fan, as with most, it just runs in the family. Almost everyone has that one or more people they knew "back in the day" that had that amazing car that you just adored. You didnt know what it was, who made it, what its purpose was, you really didnt even know why you loved it but you did and thats all it took. For me this started with my neighbor's bright red immaculate 3rd gen Iroc-Z Camaro. This was the first car i ever fell in love with. I didnt know what it was, didnt know what it sounded like, didnt even know it was a performance car, but i loved the look of it, the appeal of it, and like i said, you cant even really describe the rest. I must have been between 8 or 10 years old but i knew this is what i wanted.
Years later that dream would come true with my current 91' RS Camaro. Much earlier than that however, a few years after my love affair with the Iroc, my older brother bought a 3rd gen Camaro. It was cool but it was a real beater with a 6-cyl and it didnt last long. After that he ended up with an 88' Firebird. That was most likely my 2nd love. It was also a 6-cyl and was an auto but i didnt know any better back then. To me it was the cool kid car. After that i started doing lots of research and learning as much as possible about these rolling works of art. You should have seen this little 14 year old spouting off about 440 Challengers and 427 Yenko Camaros. Only later would i find out how big of a muscle car family my family really was.
Soon i learned my mom used to have a 67' Rally Sport Camaro "it was red with hide-away headlights and didnt have a spoiler, i hate your father for selling that car" hahaha, i heard it a hundred times. My dad sold that car so he could keep his 70' or 71' Cougar XR7 which didnt last much longer. My uncle on my dad's side had a 79' Trans Am with a built Olds 403 and as my dad would say "that car was fast and scary as ****". That eventually got my dad to buy his current 81' Turbo Trans Am. Its still awaiting restoration but i took it upon myself to rip the back seat out and get the build sheet. Jackpot! An original Y-84 "bandit/special edition" Turbo T/A with WS6 package and 4-wheel disc. Yumm... Anyway, my uncle eventually sold that 79' T/A for a newer, more hip car, some of you may have heard of it, the unicorn of muscle cars known as the Turbo Buick Regal. Maybe one of the, if not THE, only cool non-V8 muscle cars ever built. He later traded that in for a mini-van. Yeah it was terrible but hey, back then it wasnt much cooler than an SS Cobalt so, as they say hindsight is always 20/20 haha.
Moving on to my mother's side of the family. She of course had the "67' Rally Sport Camaro with hide-away headlights and it didnt have a spoiler" which they nicknamed The Stagecoach because i guess it had terribly stiff suspension. My oldest uncle had a 67' 2-door fastback Impala SS327 (now one of my favorite cars and the only year of Impala i really like). My younger uncle had a car you all should be rather familiar with, a green 65' 330 Olds 442. He bought that car after the love of his life, and probly about the most legendary car in my family's muscle car lineage, was stolen and stripped for parts. This being his pride and joy 69' 4-speed 340-S fastback Barracuda. It had quite a few mods done to it and taller rear end gears and he had 2 blown out driveshafts to prove it. This uncle is my favorite to talk too about hot rods because as you can see he is like me and prefers off brands. He could have gotten a Camaro or Chevelle but he got a Plymouth and then later an Oldsmobile.
Now on to what got me on this course. So i was in high school, i had just gotten my 91' Camaro and it had a 305 V8 so i was pretty pleased and new i had one of the better cars in the lot. Until one day i walk outside and WHAAAA. A 1972 SUPER SPORT 454 CHEVELLE PARKED RIGHT NEXT TO MY BABY!?! I wasnt sure whether to be pissed, pleased, jealous. I loved the car but it still stings when you know you've been shown up. This car was mean too. I called it out the first day for being a clone, the first one to call it out (no rally gauges, auto column shifter, and a bench seat? c'mon, it had to have been a Malibu at one time) and i was right, but it didnt matter, clones never bothered me in fact i love clones because they look amazing, drive the same, and dont give you that nagging feeling that you might tear up a piece of history by driving it the way it was MEANT to be driven. This car was my 3rd love. It was in very very good shape, but not too good. And everyone knows what i mean by too good. Its great to have a pristine show car, they look amazing and you take such pride in it. But those cars have no soul. I love a good driver it has character, the car has an identity and isnt ashamed to show it. I respect that. This car had a few nicks and dings, but it had it where it counts. A built and cammed 454 ran through headers and cherry bombs. It was a mean, loud, obnoxious, king of the street. After a year of daydreaming over it i finally figured out the kid that drove it was in my class the entire time. *face palm*. One day he left and his parents gave the car to my good friend to rebuild the motor in it as a christmas present to the kid who owned it. He rebuilt it and once it was rebuilt drove it to break it in. That started my love affair with the A-body. This car was truely amazing. After the rebuild he started the motor in my school's auto shop running just headers and his friend felt the motor thumping away through the floor. His friend was on the complete opposite side of the school on the second floor. My friend would drive this car to work (Hardees, who paid him exactly what it cost to get the 7mpg behemoth to and from work) and when he'd drive into the lot the car would shake kitchen utensils off the walls. Soon through me he started dating my sister and we saw the car a lot more. We always knew when he showed up because it would sound and feel like a train was coming. Living next to railroad tracks we were used to it, but being from a big block Chevelle just made it that much cooler. I loved the car, as you can tell, and it set me off on my search for my own A-body.
October 7th, 2011, 07:46 AM
#2
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Join Date: Jul 2011
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So my search was on and i knew one thing. As much as i loved the Chevelle (or as we nicknamed it "The Shovel" haha, get it?) i just wasnt a fan of the "norm". Camaros and Chevelles were everywhere and the last thing i wanted was what everyone else had. I like to be different and original so that narrowed it down to 3. After attending a few local car shows i started to see a pattern. At every show there would be a LOT of Chevelles..and there would always somehow be one GTO more than that. Simply, if there were 5 Chevelles there would be 6 GTOs, 3 Chevelles 4 GTOs, 7 Chevelles 8 GTOs, you get it. That didnt fly with me. And as much as i loved Pontiac i just had to go further into uncharted territory. So that narrowed it down to 2. One day while searching for a rebuildable Chevy 350 on craigslist (for my camaro, which i was way bored with by now due to the C-factor, C = Chevy/C = Common) an add somehow popped into the list for an Olds 455 with a spun bearing for $125. This excited me, especially since every 350 i had seen was $300 or more for a complete long block. This was a cool off brand AND was 105 cubic inches more than i was hoping for. A sure fire win. That day i called the seller and that weekend i bought it (we settled on $100). The guy was friendly and fun to talk too, he didnt want the motor anymore because he assumed it came out of a Toronado and wasnt anything special, plus he was rebuilding a 440 for a Dodge Demon so he wasnt interested in the Olds anymore. I however loved it. I started researching as soon as i got home and found this lovely site. Soon i learned my motor was a 72' 455 with Ga heads and whooaa, notched valve covers. Woo hoo, i got a 455 from a 442! I know this doesnt actually mean much for a 72' but i love the sentimental value of knowing my A-body project motor started life in an A-body. The motor had a flexplate however so i knew it wasnt a large-valve motor, however i bought it minus the intake so i still am not sure if it was from a W-30 car or not. Me and my two friends (one of them the guy who rebuilt and drove the Chevelle) tore the motor apart in a day. As time went on i did more research, found out exactly what parts i wanted to rebuild this motor with, and as fate would have it i got a call from a friendly Olds lover near me who sold me a set of used high compression 69' pistons for $50. A BIG help since i wasnt enjoying the idea of dropping $450 on pistons, especially since my block's cylinders were in good shape so over-sized pistons were not a necessity. Now while in the midst of my rebuild ive started searching for a project A-body to drop it in. I looked at all Cutlasses and my favorites are by far the 71/72 442s. I love the large recesses grills and the beautiful curves of the quarters that no other A-body shares. So now my search is on a for a 71 or 72 fastback Cutlass. Not long ago i found the perfect one at a car lot, inspected it, it was everything i wanted. A good condition running and driving project car for cheap. The only problem was i inspected it on a Sunday. So i came back the next day and as fate would have it i rolled into the lot JUST as some kid was handing over his first payment on the car. It was terrible knowing just a few seconds cost me my project car. But time has passed and the search continues. Many of you have been very helpful in my journey and search for my very own project and i look forward to keeping everyone updated on where my story goes from here 
Well thats it, thank you for reading and i hope it wasnt too boring. Was a fun way to pass an hour at least hahaha. And now, im off to place some calls on a few leads i have on cutlasses ^_^
...and wow, this is terribly long. I appologize haha.
THANK YOU!
Well thats it, thank you for reading and i hope it wasnt too boring. Was a fun way to pass an hour at least hahaha. And now, im off to place some calls on a few leads i have on cutlasses ^_^
...and wow, this is terribly long. I appologize haha.
THANK YOU!
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