Raoul, what kind of car? I have tried to come up with it and can't.

 

1966 Sport Fury convertible.
Mine was white with red interior.
I carried the '66 issue of Playboy in the trunk when they rated it a Playboy car.


I sold that car for $2500, it needed a transmission and filled my garage.
Nagging wife and kid going to college.
I kick myself every other day.

 

Neat car, I did not remember that side trim on there. I like the hood.

 

i think 5.4 is 330ci

 

I wasn't around for those times you speak of, but I do not feel any spirit has died. I don't think the name of the game was or is what you can get... It's about: What can you make it do? What can you make it look like? If someone else can go buy something just like yours, then it's not a hot rod. Sounds more like the Impala killed your spirit, becasue thou it is a nice car right out of the box, it can be improved on. A hot rodder would never be happy with a "Stock" vehicle right out of teh box! Even if it was 1000 HP and hitting 6's in the quarter mile out of the box. Lets make it faster and look better.

 

The point I was making is you no longer had to fabricate so much. You could order it from the factory or if you changed things, you could get bolt ons. For instance, motor mounts. Used to have to make our own, then in the eighties when I was building my 1954 F100, I just ordered motor mounts that allowed me to install a 1970 351C in the truck.

Up until about 1962, our fabricated hot rods would out run anything from the factory. All the sudden, that 1962, 327 SS 4 speed changed that.

 

I still do more fabricating than I do buying. One I'm to cheap (but anymore it is cheaper to buy pre fab than to buy the materials and do it your self) two, productions are mostly still not made quit as strong as I like. Three I'm impatient. (I dont want to wait 2 days for it to get here, I can ussually fab it in 4 hours or less.)

I think it killed a lot of spirits when people had poured thier heart and souls into building something only to have someone go buy something off the shelf that matched it.
I'm competitve so I would have been like "Oh NO NO NO NO! This can not happen!" Then I would have been back in the garage re-engineering.

 

I'm almost 52 and I do remember those days, to some extent. By the time I started driving, there was already a lot of aftermarket bolt-on performance stuff, but there was still some fabrication going on.

I didn't do any significant modding my first two cars -- a 1960 & '64 Jaguar Mark 2. I spent enough time & money just keeping them on the road! From 1972 to 1978 I had a '65 Mustang, in which I rebuilt or replaced, at one time or another, the entire drivetrain. It was pretty fast for its day: 0-60 in about 5 seconds, top speed of 135. Now my 2003 Lightning is about as quick to 60 and has a higher top speed right off the showroom floor.

When I was a kid, pickups were just trucks, and very few people modded them, or even drove them at all. My mom was a real oddity because she not only drove pickups (my dad always owned one for his business), but they all had manual transmissions. Now, at least in south Jersey, pickups are more common than economy cars, and half of them are driven by women -- although almost none of them have manual transmissions anymore.

Which is another thing that's changed: performance vehicles almost always had manual transmissions, because they were quicker and more "cool" than automatics. Now they're just as likely to have automatics, which are often quicker than the ones with manuals!

And one last thing: my parents never owned a vehicle with air conditioning, and I didn't own one until the early '80s. Now it's almost impossible to buy a vehicle without it (not that I'm complaining!).

 

Yep, I can remember saying that I would never have an air conditioner and that is in the Texas heat. It took away horsepower! Then we had a baby and every car or truck since then has air(except for my play cars).

 

If I license it to drive on the road, then it's going to have air.
I’ve only had one vehicle with out AC.
Except trailer queens I'll never "drive" one with out if I can keep from it.

I can remember back in the day, retarding the timing just a little bit, and running the carb(s) a little rich. Then if somebody put money on the line. Advance the timing, lean the carb(s) a bit, and remove all the belts.

This truck is my second automatic vehicle, it is the first truck I’ve ever had with an automatic. I am literally having to learn how to drive it and make it do everything that I made my standards do. I’m not 100% convinced it’s better, is much easier most of the time, but there has been a few times I wished it was a standard. I guess I’m still a little old school.

 

Hey Raoul, have a look at what I used to drive:

 

I'm 35, but my dad had a '67 MGB with a four banger. Nice car with no power. He still has it, but it's a shelf and a cat bed in the garage now. I wasn't brought up with the muscle car genes, but I sure would love to have been around back then. My younger days' muscle car was a 91 ford probe gt with a 2.2 liter intercooled turbocharged engine. I have it up to about 180 HP now. Whooopee.

 

I was six years old in 1973, The muscle car died until I turned 16 and inherited a 1973 LTD with a 429, no cobbra jet and this car was a tank, a big freaking tank that liked gas and the highway, not a lot of cars, the likes of 80's transams and mustangs could catch me.
Putting 350 chevys in vegas and monza's were big, and I knew this guy who put in a 351C in a mustang 2 as well as 302 in pintos, basicly the mustang and pinto were the same car.

I have tinkerd here and thier, but never built up a car, I owned a few GM midsize cars on the 80's, I would like to get a Monte Carlo ss or a 2 door Malibu or a 5.0, 4.6 T-bird or cougar..thease are cars I would like to hot rod.

 

A good friend of mine has a 1987 buick GN that is insanely neck breaking. I guess it is the muscle car of my teenagedom.

 

35 here as well so I missed out on all the good stuff too, but it never stopped us from building our own. My cousin and I built a 78 Nova with a 396 under the hood. I **** you not that thing would come around sideways at 70mph if you stompped on it. He ran it at the track one time with a borrowed set of MT Sportsmans. Best he could do was 14.37 cause he couldn't get any traction.

I built my 81 big block Blazer. 1975 454 block, 1969 396 heads, Edelbrock Performer intake, big *** Holley. I made my own lift kit for it by picking through various leaf spring paks to get what I wanted. 3.73 gears 10 bolt front and 12 bolt posi in the rear. That thing would just sit and smoke the 35" BFG AT's right off it.

There was a guy in the next town that built a mid 70's Pinto with a 460 in it. He had to cut and move the fire wall back nearly a foot, and hand fabricate a transmission tunnel . I only got to see that one on the street a few times before the cops told him to leave it at home or they would take it. It had a huge *** decal on the back window that said, "Flirting with Desaster" My modding days are almost over. I have one prject left in me. When I bought the wife a new van we decided to keep the old one cause it had 256k on the clock and just wasn't woth anything Plastic bodied 91 Olds Sillouette so it will never rust. My project is to mate the body up with one of the 4X4 Ranger frames I have laying around with a 302 and a set of 33" rubber. One of these days I will make that one happen.