Muscle cars and me

Sorry for the lack of updates, but things should be back on track now.  Today I thought I would write about muscle cars and me.  That doesn’t sound right, but hey, we will run with it.  As you may know, I don’t currently own a muscle car.  My wife has a 1966 Impala in the garage, but it isn’t a muscle car, it just has a mild 327 and is more of a family cruiser than a ground pounding muscle car.

I will own one, but that is in the future.  Looking back, I have had experience with actual muscle cars, and some cars that wouldn’t fit the traditional definition of a muscle car, but they fit the role.

Growing up, I have vague memories of a Mustang that my dad had.  That would be the first memory I have of a muscle car.  But the car that sticks in my mind the most was a Cutlass.  I don’t remember if it was a 1971 or a 1972, but I know that it had a 350 in it when dad got it.  But the engine was seized and he swapped a 389 into it.  I don’t know if it was a stock 389 or not, but I know it was very fast, at least to a little kid.  I also remember playing and “helping” dad swap the engines in the car.

The next one I remember was a 1981 Grand Prix.  When my parents got it, it had the 3.8 V6, or what ever it was being called then.  Dad got tired of the lack of power, and swapped in a 400 Pontiac engine into it.  When we put the specs into Desktop Dyno, we came up with something like 425 horsepower.  I think that may be a bit optimistic, but I do remember it was fast.  After a while, the gas got too expensive, so the car ended up with a 350 Olds instead.

The 400 lived on though, and ended up in a 1979 Jeep Cherokee.  The old full size one.  The cool part about that truck was that it had full time four wheel drive, so it had great traction.  It was also not that heavy for how large it was.  And that truck, I did get to drive.  That was the quickest accelerating four wheeled vehicle I have gotten to drive up to this point.  Unfortunately, I am in Minnesota, and salt and rust did a number on that truck, and it rusted too much to drive any more.

My first car was a 1977 Chrysler Cordoba.  While not a muscle car, it was a descendant of the B body muscle cars of the 60’s, the Charger, the Road Runner etc.  However, the Cordoba’s main claim to fame was corinthian leather.  Mine didn’t have leather, but it did have a 400.  It had a couple of mods, it no longer had the lean burn ignition, and the catalytic converter was gone.  I am not sure much horsepower those two changes added, but it was at least something.

The biggest limitation on that car was the gearing.  If I remember right, it had something like 2.73:1 gears with 15 inch wheels.  So it was a great highway car, but not much off the line.  But then again, with a high school guy driving, that probably wasn’t a bad thing.

Unfortunately rust reared its ugly head again, and the Cordoba went away.  Remember the Grand Prix?  That became my next car.  With the 350 Olds, it was reasonably powerful, especially when we put dual exhaust on it.  The drawback to it was gearing again, in this case 2.41 gears.  That means with the automatic transmission it would go 55-60 in first, then bury the needle of the 85 MPH speedometer before it upshifted to third.

Later we swapped 3.08 gears in, and that definitely helped the power.  But not long after that, rust became a problem again, and I got a 1981 Olds Delta 88 (two door).  We swapped the engine from the Grand Prix into the Delta.  Acceleration was about the same, but the handling wasn’t quite as good.  It was a comfy car and fun to drive though.  Then we swapped the Quadrajet for a Holley and got a power boost.  There must have been something wrong with the Quadrajet, but I have no idea what it was, it wasn’t important at the time.

Unfortunately, that car went down the road also.  That one wasn’t due to rust though.  I decided that I wanted a pickup instead, so I sold the car.  That is the one car I wish I had kept.  The rest of them, I wish I had one like it, but they were rusty enough that it may not have been worth trying to fix up, and parts may not have even been available.

At some point, I will have a muscle car again, but it will have to wait until finances allow.  I just need to figure out what I want, but I have time to figure that out.


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