Hemmings Motor News October 2021

“Making pizza?” The kid working the supermarket scanner asked perkily. A fair question, given the only two items between us on the belt were “00” pizza flour and yeast. “Yeah. Hopefully,” I said, probably an octave or so below full perky. “Hopefully? Why hopefully?” she asked. Again, a fair question. I wasn’t buying 15 “Filthy, Rotten Rich for Life!” scratch offs or a get-well card wishing somone’s Labradoodle a speedy recovery. You either make pizza or you don’t, right? It’s not like praying a novena. Well, maybe not for you or the kid at the supermarket’s mom. “I’ll see how it comes out. Then decide if its ‘pizza’ or not.” For years when kneading botched wads of pseudo dough, I was haunted by this Saturday Night Live spoof commercial in which Kristen Wiig serves her…

“Sounds cool, but who really wants to tool around solo in a beater Mustang?” If you say that you are mine, I’ll be here ’til the end of time. Mick Jones might have written “Should I Stay or Should I Go” about a breakup, but The Clash singer just as well could have been crooning about a car. The indecision of keeping a car or letting it go usually only gets worse with time. We add up the pros and cons, but let’s face it, the emotional bond that grows with time tends to exaggerate the pros and just brush the cons under the carpet. My friend Mike Kolar recently went through his own ups and downs of selling a car that had been with him for 40 years. “The coolest thing that happened…

The recent “Late great logo revival” article was fun and introduced some inventive and imaginative artists to Hemmings’ readership. Though unintentional, I fear Josh Skibbee has done a grave disservice to several of the artists by referring to their designs as being “simplistic.” I’m sure the author meant “simple,” implying designs that are plain, easy, or uncomplicated. By referring to them as simplistic, he has described the artists as treating the design problem with false simplicity by ignoring the more complex factors or details of their subject matter. The two terms, simple and simplistic, are not synonymous — simple is usually a compliment, while simplistic is always an insult. Sam Lollar Desert Hot Springs, California Having just had time to skim through my July issue of HMN I was glad to see the museum…

Chevrolet teases a flat-plane crankshaft in the 2023 Corvette Z06 When the mid-engine, eighth-generation Corvette debuted, an ultra-high-performance Z06 version was conspicuously absent from the lineup. Then, the C8R race cars rolled out with 5.5-liter V-8s and flat-plane crankshafts, feeding enthusiast speculation that the Z06, when it came, would share that technology. Ford had previously introduced a 5.2-liter flat-plane-crank “Voodoo” V-8 in the 2016-’20 Shelby GT350. A flat-plane crankshaft has 180-degree crank throws. When used in a V-8, it makes for a simpler, lighter crank that can rev higher than the typical cross-plane crank with 90-degree throws. The tradeoff is considerably more vibration and a louder exhaust note. In consequence, a flat-plane crank has come to be considered a particularly exotic piece, limited to race cars and the most exclusive of sports…

Did Buick invent the muscle car in 1936, with its Century? Did the Century save a moribund Buick from an early death? You can easily make a case for answering both queries in the affirmative. Buick was down in the dumps for most of the ’30s and had sold barely 53,000 cars in 1935, half the volume of independent Hudson. But new Buick boss Harlow Curtice, assigned to turn the division around, went full-court press on new models — new bodies, new names, new engines, new excitement. It worked: Buick sales more than tripled for 1936, as America was pulling out of the Depression. Buick’s 179,533 cars were 4.9 percent of American production and ensured the marque seventh place among U.S. automakers. The new 320.2-cubic-inch Straight 8, which lived in everything but…

You can’t have a discussion about monumental four-wheel-drive pickups (yes, some of us have those discussions) without giving the mighty Dodge Power Wagon its due. This is the original. The grandpappy of those $60,000, four-door luxury sedans with pickup boxes that seem to be standard issue on new-car lots today. (That’s an entirely different discussion that some of us have.) But no one ever mistook the Power Wagon for a Town Car. After Dodge’s WC series trucks helped carry the Allied victory in World War II, a civilian version, the WDX series (known internally as the T-137) joined the civilian workforce. The Power Wagon in civvies found eager buyers across postwar America as the truck excelled at plowing snow, towing broken-down cars in for repair, doing farm work, and much more.…