Hot Rod June 2021

It occurred to me last week that the ECM in my 1993 GMC C1500 is 28 years old, which in itself really isn’t a big deal, but it got me wondering how many other electronic items are still in working condition nearly 30 years after they were made. That’s kind of a loaded question because there are a lot of factors involved in determining the longevity of a product. How well were they made? What conditions were they used in? The operating environment factors in as much as the quality standards. For example, my TV is a hand-me-down from my parents that they bought new in the ’90s, and it still works, but a friend recently had to replace a fancy digital washer and dryer pair that were less than…

20 Years Ago June 2001: 148 pages, $3.99 Who doesn’t like wagons? Seriously. We bet this issue was a hot seller with the cool (and rare) two-door Chevelle and flamed Belvedere wagons on the cover. Inside were features on a bunch of wagons, including a ’57 Mercury Montclair Voyager, a ’65 Pontiac Tempest Custom, a ’59 Chevrolet Kingswood, and the ’65 Belvedere and ’65 Chevelle cover stars. Tech Editor Steve Magnante continued his build series of the Wilshire Shaker, his altered-wheelbase ’63 Nova. Gray Baskerville wrote a cool retrospective piece on the career of builder/racer John Buttera. Tech Editor Terry McGean went into the weeds on exhaust crossovers, shooting out an X-pipe system and an H-pipe system in an Olds 442 and also braved the murky waters of valve actuation by comparing…

As former HOT ROD editor Drew Hardin explained, “When Chevrolet announced it was replacing its W-series engines with the 396ci Mark IV big-block, Southern California drag racer Tom Sturm was among the first to order one. It took a while for Chevrolet to fill the order; so long, in fact, that Sturm wound up buying a 396 from his local dealer—and the ’65 Impala it came in.” Sturm went through the engine top to bottom, and also modified a ’64 Malibu that would be its eventual home. Car Craft magazine covered both the engine and the car in its September 1965 issue in stories written by the magazine’s technical editor, Bud Lang. Lang described the engine rebuild in granular detail. Among the highlights: The block was bored to 4.250-inch and the crank…

Devin Jimenez was born with her grandfather’s interest in hot rods. She owns this 1940 Ford coupe, but her grandfather, William “Buzz” Remai was the young man who bought it in 1953. He had just come back to Fontana, California, after serving in Korea when he purchased the ’40 Ford from an elderly widow. Back then, the car wore faded blue paint and was lowered by the old-time technique of heating the front springs to drop the nose It rolled on ’50 Merc wheels “and the biggest rear tires and the smallest front tires I could get,” Buzz remembers. The 59AB Flathead engine was topped with an Evans manifold and three Stromberg 97 carburetors. The shifter for the ’39 Ford transmission was relocated from the column to the floor to avoid…

There are guys that fall into the whole car thing, and then there are those like Ken Carmon that are born into it. In this case, his was a hardcore Chevy household that embraced the Bow Tie. Being from a small community also had an impact on what he was exposed to. He recalls, “I grew up in the small hamlet of Redwood, New York, with a population of less than 300 inhabitants, and one small Chevrolet-Oldsmobile dealership. It served the community for a 20-mile radius. I used to walk by there on my way to school every day and look in the window to see what they had for sale.” By the time he reached his teenage years, the first ride he had was, of course, Chevy flavored, but…

Growing up in a household that embraces the enthusiasm for all things automotive usually has a way of leaving a mark on anyone exposed to it. As a youngster growing up, Kevin Leap was immersed in that type of enthusiasm. “There were usually some performance cars at my house,” he explains. “My brother was always working on one of his projects or was fixing someone else’s car, and my dad would often take us to the local dragstrip.” By the time Kevin started high school in 1973, he had managed to put together a 1964 Impala station wagon with a 409 and four-speed as a daily driver. After his scholastic tour of duty ended, he signed up for another tour of duty in the military and replaced the Chevy wagon with…