Hemmings Muscle Machines July 2022

When the bolt fell out and clinked its way down into the engine bay without making the welcome sound of hitting the pavement below, I stepped back and asked myself, “Why?” Not why had the bolt fallen out — I already knew that. What I wanted to know was, why do I keep doing this? Why do I keep willingly spending my free time working on old cars only to wind up aggravated? Hadn’t I learned anything in the 30-plus years I’ve been at this? I could be sitting on the couch right now, instead of crawling around on my driveway trying to find that damn bolt. I stood there for a few minutes, reflecting on all the time I’d spent rolling around on that piece of pavement over the past few…

In the Southwest, the pickup is king. There are plenty of hot cars around, but if you really want to get noticed, you get a truck. We don’t mean some SUV with a fancy foreign badge and tires that look like they’d be afraid to touch desert sand—we mean a truck. The less subtle, the better. Ford’s Raptor has practically owned the market for a decade now. Like the F-150 it’s based on, Raptor has been subjected to a steady diet of improvements, innovations, size gain, and weight loss. It’s 86.6 inches wide, requiring those little amber lights in the grille to let everyone ahead know that a wide load’s a-comin’. The Raptor’s limousine-like 145-inch wheelbase is longer than an entire Ford Fiesta ST (R.I.P.) from bumper to bumper. Its track—74…

Send your letters, photos and opinions to tmcgean@hemmings.com “I’m a huge fan of our hobby and of Hemmings. My daughter Kaitlin is a figure skater (ice dancer) on Team USA and just returned from competing in her first Olympic Games in Beijing, where she and her partner Jean Luc Baker placed 11th (she and Jean Luc were first alternates for the previous Olympics). Even before I thought she had a chance of making the Olympic Team, I had always wanted to find a 1972 Sprint Edition Mustang. I was lucky enough to find one several years ago, about 30 miles from me, and was luckier still that it was a Q-code 351 4V. The car is a very respectable driver with 45,000 miles on it. I was able to find the correct…

THE DAY YOU PLUCK IT FROM A ROW of cars at the local dealership, can you ever really know that it will be your forever car? Many don’t. We get the feeling that Bill Stanfield did. “We bought it June 26, 1969, from Blackwell Motor Company in Danville, Virginia,” wife Laura Stanfield recalls. The Dart was painted Y4 Gold (Bill’s preferred hue) and came with a four-speed stick, black bench-seat interior, black tail stripe, and little else. “We bought it a few weeks after our son Tony was born. Bill traded cars a lot.” But somehow this Dart Swinger 340 is the one that stayed. It’s easy to understand why: Space across two bench seats made ample room inside for Bill, Laura, and sons Tony and Brian, perfect for the Stanfield family;…

JIM McGOWAN HAS BEEN AN HMNCOLUMNIST since the very beginning of the magazine. Over those years, you’ve heard many references to this car: his Reef Turquoise 1965 Pontiac GTO convertible. Jim acquired the car when it was only 19 years old as a “good original” and then spent the next couple years making it the beautifully restored car seen on these pages — right down to using lacquer paint to recreate the factory finish. That makes Jim one of the true veterans of the hobby, with a love for muscle cars that predates the first price bubble of the early 1990s, when GTOs, Chevelles, and eventually anything with a Hemi started bringing in newcomers with dollar signs in their eyes and an investor-grade bank account to match. In fact, Jim’s infatuation with…

When I purchased my first muscle car, I simply left it as delivered and enjoyed it with only a few minor appearance changes. Some of my more affluent friends added new tires and mag wheels, upgraded sound systems, different steering wheels, and more. That was beyond my means at the time. This GTO is a totally dependable driving classic that I don’t have to worry about when I want to take it out to a show, or just a nice weekend drive. All the revisions I’ve made are (or appear as) factory original. Another factory part that was a little hotter or flashier might not have been on the build sheet, but it could have been, so why the heck not?…