Hot Rod March 2021

Editor-in-Chief @john.mcgann After securing both the drivers’ and team Championships at Laguna Seca, Corvette Racing finally claimed the Manufacturer’s Championship for Chevrolet in the IMSA WeatherTech Sports Car Championship series at the 12 Hours of Sebring, the last race of the season. The Corvette C8.R has been a dominant force in the GT Le Mans Class (GTLM) in 2020, claiming six victories, seven pole positions, and the fastest race lap at five venues. Chevrolet fields two C8.R race cars in GTLM, the No. 3 car, driven by Antonio Garcia and Jordan Taylor, and the No. 4 car, driven by Oliver Gavin and Tommy Milner. Nicky Catsburg and Marcel Fässler join the No. 3 and 4 teams, respectively, as extra drivers in the long endurance races. With their second-place finish at the Hyundai…

20 Years Ago March 2001: 136 pages, $3.99 Twelve seconds and 20 mpg is a pretty compelling headline, and we suspect this issue sold pretty well because of it. The Sub Lime 1970 Challenger was a worthy car, too. Photographed in the rain while on the previous year’s Power Tour, a dreary setting is likely the reason why the car was clipped out and dropped on a high-tech-looking bar graph background, presumably to hint at the tech-heavy feature within. The Challenger was part of a compilation of cars that all ran in the 12s at the dragstrip but were thrifty on mpgs at the same time. The six-page feature contained an interesting mix of miserly machines: a ’66 Nova with a Buick Grand National engine, a ’75 Vega with a ZZ430 small-block…

This 1961 Impala SS was something special. Its owner, Dan Gurney, had it modified to go “Jaguar hunting on the weekends,” said writer OCee Ritch in the July 1961 issue of Sports Car Graphic magazine. At the time, Gurney was in the thick of his Formula 1 career. He believed that the Impala SS, with just a few choice modifications, could successfully take on the Jaguar sedans competing in British saloon races of the time—saloon being the British word for sedan and not some pub crawl. This was the first year Chevrolet offered the 409 in the Impala; it was rated at 360 hp and 409 lb-ft of torque using a single four-barrel carburetor. In Dan’s car, the engine was mostly left alone. Local high-performance guru Bill Thomas and Bill Fowler just…

Inspiration. Or impact, encouragement, guidance—any way you define it, the lives we lead and the paths we take can be thoroughly directed by the people responsible for bringing us into this world. Our parents are usually our first and foremost leaders in life, starting at birth and typically continuing even after they’ve left us. They look over us and care for us, and it’s their daily directive that helps shape our lives. That’s why many of us follow our parents in so many ways, including our chosen careers and also our favorite daily diversions. Love of the automotive hobby is one of those qualities that’s commonly passed down from parent to child, and it’s typical to see sons and daughters follow their parents into the garage and learn from them what their…

Straight from the factory, a 1941 Willys coupe was a sexy thing with curvaceous lines reminiscent of a larger 1940 Ford. But under the hood, it was not what men of the future would be looking for. The Gasser Wars came, and a host of old cars with lightweight bodies would find themselves drafted. From 1933 models until the early 1940s, the bulk of Willys automobiles found themselves slaving at a drag strip. The story of Dennis Mariani’s 1941 Willys was that of a car plundered for its body to labor long nights on the strip, but its destiny would be unlike that of its peers. Dennis worked out a deal with Don Orosco to take possession of the former drag car, then enlisted Roy Brizio Street Rods to restore the 1941…

Frank Arone’s 1970 Chevrolet Camaro Z28 is the latest in a group of nearly two dozen muscle car restorations that he has done. He owns a restoration shop that, while it is a business, “is not highly profitable for me,” he admits. “It’s a labor of love.” Frank restored many of these muscle cars prior to opening this restoration facility, which goes back to the year 2000. He was a muscle car enthusiast first. Frank has been painting cars since he was 12 years old. His interests have covered Corvettes to sport trucks, four-wheel-drives to SUVs, and now at 62, his interests have circled back to muscle cars, which are what he really likes. Over the years, he’s amassed some noteworthy models, including a 1969 COPO Camaro, a 1969 Z/28, and a…