Mad Scientist Matt's Lair

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Famous cars from Hot Rod Magazine: Where are they now?

When I saw a gunmetal gray '66 Charger show up at the Stone Mountain Cool Car Festival (yes, I'm still posting my stash of pictures from there!), I thought it looked familiar. Sure enough, it was none other than Steven Strope's project car, Skully. This car was named one of the top ten hot rods of the year when it came out.

I noticed the current owner has made a few changes. It's now rolling on smaller Torque-Thrusts instead of the large billet wheels, and I've noticed a bit of chrome creeping into the engine compartment. I really liked it better the other way, as the wheels and Pure Vision's chrome-free engine details were really two of the things that set it apart. However, you'll notice Skully still has her trademark pinstripes, and the air conditioning is definitely an improvement.

Labels: Stone Mountain Show

# posted by Mad Scientist Matt @ 8:05 AM 0 comments

Monday, May 14, 2007

My favorite kind of supercar

I remember once reading an essay in Car and Driver about when brand management is a good thing. Brand management with cars is easy to go horribly wrong - look at how GM tried to market mechancially identical cars with similar performance to different niches in the '90s by just changing the sheet metal and advertising campaigns. But there are some times that brand management can make sense. For example, Honda decided that they would make a half price Ferarri with their Acura NSX. Unfortunately, when they got it to the market, they found that there wasn't much of a demand for a half price Ferarri. More people buy Ferarris to impress the neighbors than to drive them to the full extent of their capability, and you don't impress that kind of neighbors by getting things at half the price.

But if you can get all of the real things that make exotics good - mid engined, high revving DOHC V8, light weight (which these days doesn't even apply to all exotics - there are some out there that make a Chevy Caprice look light), a good chassis - and build it for less than a tenth of the price of a Ferarri in your own garage, you've got something.

Here's a Pontiac Fiero with a Cadillac Northstar V8. It may not impress your snobbish Beverly Hills neighbors. But it sure impresses me when a gearhead builds his own version of an exotic without breaking the bank.

Labels: Stone Mountain Show

# posted by Mad Scientist Matt @ 7:11 PM 0 comments

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Slant sixes at Stone Mountain

Most of the people who show off their cars at cruise-ins and similar events for classic cars bring V8s. Mopar fans are somewhat more inclined, if you'll pardon the pun, to bring six cylinder cars than their Ford and GM rivals. Two people at the Stone Mountain Cool Car Festival decided to bring slant sixes, in an early Barracuda (above) and Corronet (below). Being a fan of the Leaning Tower of Power myself, I had to get these two slant sixes out on the blog.

Labels: Stone Mountain Show

# posted by Mad Scientist Matt @ 10:45 AM 0 comments

More Stone Mountain Cool Car Festiva pictures

Yes, I've got a lot more pictures from the Cool Car Festival stashed away for slow days. Normally I'm not very big on the '32 Ford with a Chevy smallblock. Sure, the Mouse is a pretty good option for cheap power. But this combination has become something of a cliche. Sometimes I just want to see somebody commit an act of steel blasphemy and show up with a '32 Ford with a Nissan SR20DET powering it just so it won't be the same as what everyone else has.

Then sometimes I see a car that reminds me of what this combination is all about. In spite of a few modern touches like an electric fan, this is one of the orginals, the cars that the me-too street rods are immitating. The builder did this swap in the '50s, back when a smallblock Chevy was new and exotic rather than something anybody can find by the dozen at Pull-A-Part. Now it's restored and out cruising the streets again.

Labels: Stone Mountain Show

# posted by Mad Scientist Matt @ 10:32 AM 0 comments

Monday, April 09, 2007

Stone Mountain Cool Car Festival: Oooh, shiny!

This was probably my favorite paint job at the whole show. Luckily I was able to snap some shots of it before he opened the hood. I really prefer to photograph most show cars with the hood closed, as that's a much better way to show how the entire exterior package really works. But it seems like it was practically a requirement here that you must pop the hood when you show your car, even if it's just another small block Chevy with a few bits of chrome.

Labels: Stone Mountain Show

# posted by Mad Scientist Matt @ 7:40 PM 0 comments

Stone Mountain Cool Car Festival: "Sleeper" Cadillac

OK, so putting it on Cragars may hint it belongs to an enthusiast, and writing "SLEEPER" on the license plate seems a bit counterproductive. Still, who'd expect an old yellow Cadillac barge to be packing an injected smallblock, or to put 280 hp to the rear wheels? That's probably eighty more than it originally made at the crank.

Labels: Stone Mountain Show

# posted by Mad Scientist Matt @ 7:36 PM 0 comments

Saturday, April 07, 2007

Stone Mountain Cool Car Festival: Novas

I went to the Stone Mountain Cool Car Festival last week, and took a lot of pictures. I'll be posting these throughout the next week; there's just too many images for one post. I'll start this with a collection of Chevy Novas, because my wife Kelly is fond of them. These four here are a collection of her favorite body style of Nova.

Although it's not Kelly's favorite year, this one that Year One brought along really stood out. When I looked under the hood, my first thought was that they'd put an LS1 in it. After all, it wasn an injected motor with that distinctive coil-per-plug ignition. That would have stood out on its own, as most of the injected cars there were either modern Mustangs or PT Cruisers. But something didn't look right. The engine was too large for an LS1, and the intake had paired ports. I took a closer look, and realized it was an injected big block Chevy fitted with an LS1 ignition!