Hot Rod May 2022

@john.mcgann In a recent staff meeting, when I mentioned that May would be the electric Project X issue, a colleague joked that the main headline on the cover should read, “This is the Last Issue”. While we all shared a hearty chuckle, in the back of my mind, I was worried. What does this latest push to electrify all modes of personal transportation mean for the performance-minded enthusiast? How do we react to what seems to be powerful forces making radical changes to our lives? At a more basic level, are these changes really necessary? Will electric vehicles save the planet? Is this the end of things? Is it even possible to have an honest discussion on some of these topics? Motor Trend has gone all in on the EV bandwagon. An…

20 Years Ago May 2002, 132 pages, $3.99 Spanning nearly ten pages in this issue was the cover theme: “Best Bolt-Ons” for your car. It was a compilation of an eclectic mix of genre: “Best Gasser Suspension Bolt-Ons,” “Best Chevy W-Motor Bolt-Ons,” “Best Buick Turbo Bolt-Ons,” “Best Ford Turbo 2.3 Bolt-Ons,” and so on. An industry expert would weigh in on his area of specialty, and the info one could glean from this was as invaluable as it was concise. Last month’s budget paintjob was finished up by Kevin Oeste in his article on wet sanding and buffing a new paintjob. Over the span of two issues he transformed a crusty ’86 Mustang into quite the looker. Steve Magnante went in-depth on what a transbrake is and how it works, and Ro…

While many manufacturers have toyed with building engines with hemispherical combustion chambers, only Chrysler has wed itself to the technology to the extent that the name “Hemi” has become synonymous with Chrysler. As domestic manufacturers fought for engineering supremacy following World War II, it was Chrysler that emerged with unique research produced from an experimental inverted V16 engine with over 2,500 hp and 36 liters of displacement called the IV-2220. When mounted to the airframe of a Republic P-47D Thunderbolt, the hemispherical IV-2220 was able to sustain level flight at 504 mph at 15,000 feet. Despite this being unheard of for a prop-driven aircraft, the military contract was canceled. New-fangled jet-powered aircraft were the future, but the breakthrough engine still had a role to play, albeit in greatly modified form. By…

A lot of us had our taste in cars influenced by the first car we worked on or drove when we were young. Dean Settje, from Raymond, Nebraska, said that for him the influential car was a 1957 Chevy. It wasn’t his own car, but it belonged to a high school friend, and he helped with the build as much as he could. That’s all it took to hook him for life. It didn’t take long before Dean started owning his own cars and trucks, but it would be a couple of decades before he found a ’57 of his own. That day came about 20 years ago. The car—the deep red Bel Air hardtop featured here—had been owned by a car collector and was being sold at an estate auction.…

Over the years, there have been dozens of long-term “magazine” project cars, but none as long-lived or as famous as the yellow 1957 Chevy known as Project X. It all started in 1965 (the year this writer was born) when Popular Hot Rodding, then part of Argus Publishing, bought the used ’57 Chevy for $250 at a Santa Monica car dealer. Yeah, that’s not a typo—250 bucks! Oh, how times have changed. The idea of Project X was for it to be a product and technical test bed. Engines, tires, suspension, paint, it was all set to be tried out and, where applicable, track tested. There was no plan for X to ever be finished, no end goal; it was just a car to try out ideas for readers and help…

This ’57 Chevy’s backstory from an insider might be more interesting than the official one. This is a love story of sorts. Project X is the 1957 Chevy 210 two-door sedan that Popular Hot Rodding (PHR) magazine bought in 1965 for $250 with the intent of modifying it in accordance with readers’ wishes. The love story part is complicated, as many things in life are. Popular Hot Rodding readers loved it, and by all accounts, so did the original staff of PHR. The magazine had started only three years prior, in 1962, as a competitor to cross-town rival, HOT ROD, and what the magazine needed was an affordable project on which to try various new speed products that were being developed by folks like Hedman, Edelbrock, and Alston. Although building…