Detroit has this terrific habit of not actually giving up on any of its engines or chassis architecture. For those trying to keep their cars alive, it’s a terrific boon. But it’s also an easy source of updating and modernizing older cars. I was reminded this morning when the editor-in-chief and I recalled our old joke about creating a magazine called Stock Rod that would focus on removing all of the horrible things that misguided owners have done to their cars over the years and replacing the components with bits that Detroit’s finest engineering minds worked and slaved over for years – thus making the result a far more drivable car.
It began as a what-if story I photographed for another magazine more than 15 years ago. The car in question was a 1977 Chevelle, done up to look quasi-factory, as it might have if Chevrolet had bothered to do a Chevelle SS in 1977. (Chevrolet was only dipping its toe back into performance with the half-year launch of the Z/28 Camaro; you think they were going to give any love to the lame-duck 1977 A-body?) Rally wheels, factory colors, stripes and textures, etc, all with an eye toward legality; the idea that the factory could have done something like this. The execution itself was fine, but I was quite taken with the idea of a phantom Detroit machine, putting forth an ideal that Detroit didn’t bother with. I was quite taken with the concept.
Anyone could spend $75,000, throw aftermarket parts at a car and make it look better and drive better … but doing it with parts that, at least on the outside, look factory? Working within those constrictions, I think, make for more creative solutions. We have discovered this on our own. A Ford AOD will happily bolt up to the back of a Ford 351 Cleveland engine, as I discovered with my Montego back in the 1990s. Disc brake spindles from a 1973 to 1976 Dart will pop onto Mopar A-bodies clear back to 1960 (and accept rotors up to the Cordoba-slash-1970s B-body cop-spec 11-3/4-inch, if you get 15-inch wheels to clear them). I also replaced the Dart’s spindly 7-1/4-inch axle (and its attendant 9-inch drum brakes) with an axle from a 1973 Dart with tow package; same width, but I got 10-inch drum brakes and a 3.23 gear with Sure-Grip. (And the 273 will surely make way for the 360 that’s completed in the shop soon enough.)
Others have taken this basic concept and gone much further with it. In Hemmings Muscle Machines, I wrote about a pair of mid-sized Fords – one convertible, one Ranchero – that wore Mercury Cyclone noses and sheetmetal that looked factory, but didn’t. Another favorite was Mark McCourt’s story about a 1980s Chevy Monte Carlo treated to the tuned-port-injected 350 and six-speed transmission it never received from the factory. Both stuck true to the factory-esque aesthetic.
Then I found myself thinking this way: General Motors was a big outfit in its heyday, and its many divisions still worked independently of each other. What could be built if you put all of the tech from a given model year into a single car? All of the division’s best production ideas in a single machine. Take, say, General Motors in 1979. Fuel injection from a rear-drive Cadillac Seville atop a W72 Pontiac 400, Trans Am steering box, independent rear suspension from a Corvette, WS6-spec front suspension, and eight-inch wheels from either a WS6 Trans Am or Corvette. Mix in the General’s best seats of the era (we’d need to try a few to see what hit our bodies just right), and maybe toss in automatic load-leveling out of a Toronado. Hide some modern components in there (better cylinder heads, catalytic converters that don’t involve pellets, a five- or six-speed transmission for lower revs) and you’re left with a stunner of a machine. Aaah, but what to put these components in? Where would they live? An F-body seems the obvious choice because so many parts were purloined from there, but we’d love to find a lighter, downsized rear-drive A-body. A Malibu could work. Maybe a Regal? Maybe a Grand Am? Pontiac actually had a concept in this mold (the Grand Am CA) back in 1979, but never quite pulled the trigger. Alas.
And then I take a hard right turn and wonder what would be the ultimate version of a particular body line, using only components available from that chassis line in its lifetime? Spread out over divisions and years, a single chassis could encompass any number of refinements. I find myself gravitating toward the lower-cost end of the spectrum – quite possibly because my dreams often involve things that I have an outside chance of being able to afford.
To wit: An early Ford Falcon is a machine that’s filled with charm and style. Early ones could only have a Six below the hood (variants of this are still built in Australia, with an aluminum SOHC and later DOHC head, turbochargers, high-swirl chambers and fuel injection); starting in 1963, a V-8 was available in the Falcon. The Falcon’s bones lived through 1980, when the last of the Granada/Monarch/Versailles line rolled out of Dearborn. Surely the Granada’s 11-inch front disc brakes (power or otherwise), plus an entire 9-inch rear axle unit (with disc brakes!) out of a Versailles would make things far more highway-friendly. The late 1970s Granada ESS came with a stronger springs-and-sway-bar package, though by 1980 any mention of suspension was stricken from the catalog. Engine-wise? Though the engine bay would surely swallow something larger, something in a Windsor V-8 seems most likely; backed to a five-speed with overdrive, you now have something that’s degrees more powerful and efficient than it would have been when new, boatloads more fun to drive, and safer to boot – all the while looking like a vintage car that can be as plain or as snazzy as you want to make it. (Something like the one from the March 2009 issue of Hemmings Muscle Machines .)
GM’s X-car line has been maligned over decades, but who remembers that the front-drive A-cars from 1982 lasted clear through to 1996? With fifteen years’ worth of production and four GM divisions building As and Xs, you should be able to mix and match factory parts to your heart’s content. Those A-bodies had 3.8-liter V6s in the late 1980s – just the ticket for effortless cruising; supercharged 3800s are also out there, but weren’t ever available in the As. Later Citation X11 suspension (fettled by John Heinricy, the chassis engineer who both sorted the Cadillac CTS-V’s suspension and raced endless laps for Chevrolet’s Corvette-based sports-car racing efforts) could be of interest, although the Pontiac 6000STE, the long-forgotten American-built, front-wheel-drive sedan built to take on the European sports-sedan onslaught of the 1980s, is also a candidate. Oh, and you’ll want to swap over the ABS system from a 1990s A-body; it seems that the X-car’s braking issues had been resolved well into the 1980s. Pack it all into a Citation Coupe body (not the football-shaped hatch, mind; the formal-roof two-door that looked like a baby Malibu) with some mid-1980s X11 ornamentation and wheels, and you can end up with an X-car that will surprise and thrill. (Better still if you plan on owning and driving the car forever, considering you will almost certainly never get your money back out of it.)
I’ve often wondered whether you could slip a Ford Panther-chassis’ed Mercury Marauder under the sheetmetal of a 1979 Ford LTD, drop in a new Coyote V-8 out of a Mustang, paint it black and white and go scare some folks. I suspect that a 421-powered rope-drive Tempest with eight-lug wheels would look terrific and be hilarious to drive. I’ve driven past many a recent Ford Ranger pickup and wondered whether you could plop a 1983 body on top of the newer truck’s chassis and enjoy the crisp vintage folds of steel while having something more contemporary beneath you. I’d love to drive one and see. I’d also love for someone else to spend the money to build it.
Sometimes, though, the factory does the work itself. For my money, GM fulfilled my dream in 1989, when it combined its most potent engine, the turbocharged Buick V-6, with its most potent chassis, the GM F-body, to make the 20th Anniversary Trans Am special edition, which doubled as an Indy Pace Car for that year. I’ve driven one, and much like the Falcon and the Cy-clones I photographed, drove and referenced above, the drive was sublime. The T/A is another one I can’t afford to put in my garage. Yet.
Meanwhile, I need to get working on that Dart. What would you build along these lines?
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