Hemmings Muscle Machines

Yet, the biggest cars from Motown were still the most stylish… In assembling this issue with its focus on full-size performers, I was reminded of the role those models have played in the history of hot cars — not just when they were new, but years later as well. The first thing often pointed out by veteran gearheads is that, at one time, there wasn’t really any such thing as a “full-size” car — the American manufacturers generally offered a line of variations on a single base design. So, at Chevrolet in 1955, the only model that didn’t have that brand-new face with the big egg-crate grille and aggressive headlamp prows was the Corvette, and those were likely a rare sight at Chevy dealers that year. As Detroit got more serious about…

In November, news broke that GM was once again considering pulling the Corvette away from Chevrolet and turning it into its own marque. To do this, it would have a three-model range: the two-seat sports car (and all of its known and unknown iterations — Stingray, E-ray, Z06, Zora, et al) along with a four-door sedan and an SUV, both of which are scheduled to be EVs. The plan is for this to happen in 2025 — just two short years from now, and about halfway through the C8 Corvette’s life cycle. The surprise here isn’t that there’s talk about this; the surprise is how long GM has wanted to grow Corvette beyond its two-seat-sports-car brief without having pulled the trigger. There has been talk of turning Corvette into its own…

Terry McGean’s column, “Shifting Standards,” (HMM #233, January 2023) that talked about 1968-’70 Chargers being highly desirable cars these days, was absolutely correct. I certainly wish I had my ’69 back now. I had a ’69 Charger 383/automatic during my senior year in high school — class of ’83 — and sold it in 1984 to buy a ’72 Challenger. Now I have a ’74 Charger that I purchased in 2012 and have been slowly “bringing back from the brink” when money is available and life in general allows. I purchased the ’74 with intentions of my wife and I doing some fun-time cruising, once I got it road ready and legal. Unfortunately, she passed away in May of 2022 and only rode in the car once or twice before it…

LIKE MANY OF US EMBEDDED DEEPLY in the classic car and hot-rodding hobby, Ray Schwedhelm was introduced to the scene through his immediate family. The Toms River, New Jersey, resident fondly remembers growing up under the tutelage of his kin, learning the ins and outs of repair and maintenance by hanging close and educating himself through one-on-one interactions with his local familial hot-rod fanatics. It turns out that the members of Ray’s family were big fans of the now-orphaned cars of GM’s departed Pontiac brand. “My whole family was and still is into Ponchos! My uncle John has a ’71 Le Mans he bought new. Cousin John has a ’90 Grand Prix he grabbed off the showroom floor, which keeps company with his ’78 Trans Am. His son John has…

COMPLETED AND READY FOR RACE DUTY, Project Rampart (our 2021 Dodge Durango Hellcat upgraded to ultimate-track-support-vehicle status) wowed the throngs who flocked to Las Vegas to check out the annual SEMA extravaganza this past November. Festooned in our signature Hemmings green, the Durango enjoyed prominent placement in the Dodge booth in its new location right in the center of the show’s main hall. The Durango shared floorspace with a number of Dodge’s “Last Call” special edition Challengers and Chargers, as well as Dodge’s Charger Daytona EV concept, but it was the profile of a classic Charger Daytona that will likely be paired with our hauler soon. Mike Musto’s ’69 Daytona tribute was also on the floor in the Dodge display at SEMA showing off its new Hellcat Redeye crate engine and…

THERE ARE AT LEAST A COUPLE OF THINGS we’d rather have been doing than slogging through a field on a drizzly Saturday morning. But we were on a mission to find a clutch pedal and linkage setup needed to perform an automatic-to-manual transmission swap on a ’68 Chevrolet Bel Air. Faithful readers of HMM will recall that, a while back, we installed a big-block engine and TH400 transmission in our ’68 Bel Air. The intent was to mimic a similar combination offered by Motion Performance, back in the day. We recounted the swap, entitled “Immaculate Deception,” in the January ’22 issue (HMM #221). After the story appeared, however, more than one person chastised us for not installing a four-speed, the way that the majority of the Motion “Street Racer Specials” were…