Nice cars other than x-fire

Bob Bourke had been sketching bullet nosed cars since 1941, inspired by fighter plane engine nacelles, and kept getting turned down because postwar Americans weren't ready to celebrate war machinery yet. By 1950 enough time had passed, and Raymond Loewy's studio put Bourke's idea into production on the Champion Starlight Coupe alongside something equally ambitious, a four part wraparound rear window that wrapped so completely around the C pillars that comedians started asking whether the car was coming or going. The glass wasn't a styling gimmick. It gave rear seat passengers a panoramic view no other American car offered and flooded the cabin with light, but producing that compound curve required tooling and glazing techniques that added meaningful cost to a car Studebaker was trying to sell to economy minded buyers. The L-head 169 cubic inch six made 85 horsepower and returned the kind of fuel economy that won Mobilgas economy runs, which helped justify the price. Studebaker produced 343,164 bullet nose cars across a stretched 14 month 1950 model year, its peak output ever. The window that almost didn't exist turned out to be the thing everyone remembered.
1788654189035.webp
 
In 1968, Chrysler showrooms were packed with buyers drooling over the restyled Charger. It looked mean, but options drove the price up fast. Street racers who cared more about winning stoplight drags than looking rich walked right past it.

That was where the Dodge Dart GTS waited.

The Dart had a reputation as a sensible family car, but the GTS package turned it into a real threat. Dodge dropped in their new 340 small block V8, officially rated at 275 horsepower though it revved past 6,000 RPM and made far more. Buyers could even get an optional 383 big block.

Most importantly, the Dart weighed roughly 650 pounds less than a Charger. That weight advantage let it clock low 14 second quarter miles off the showroom floor. Drivers who spent serious money on heavy, glamorous muscle often learned the hard way that curb weight beats status.

1788912246625.webp
 
Working out of a modest shop in Arlington, Texas, David Reher, Buddy Morrison, and Lee Shepherd had none of the massive corporate budgets enjoyed by factory backed teams. What they had was an obsession with airflow.

Shepherd was a quiet craftsman who spent endless hours hunched over a workbench, shaping cylinder head ports by hand with a die grinder. Reher and Morrison dialed in the short blocks, coaxing well over 1,000 horsepower out of their naturally aspirated 500 cubic inch big block Chevrolet V8.

At the track, Shepherd drove with ice in his veins. In this 1984 Chevrolet Camaro Pro Stock car, the trio pulled off the unthinkable by sweeping both the NHRA and IHRA world championships in the same season. Giant automakers poured fortunes into engineering labs, but three Texas mechanics proved that sweat, airflow, and relentless testing could humiliate an unlimited corporate budget.

1788912396288.webp
 
In 1963, most people buying this plain two door sedan were municipal fleets, taxi companies, or frugal commuters looking for cheap transportation. It had painted steel wheels, tiny dog dish hubcaps, a bench seat, and rubber floor mats where carpeting belonged.

Yet hiding beneath that dull wrapper was the 1963 Plymouth Savoy Max Wedge.

Hardcore racers ordered the bottom trim Savoy for a simple reason. Its rigid pillared roofline made it both the lightest and stiffest body in Plymouth's lineup. Instead of a mild commuter engine, checking the right option code dropped in the race spec 426 Max Wedge V8. With twin carburetors on an exotic cross ram intake, it pushed 425 horsepower straight from the factory.

Only a tiny handful left Detroit in this spartan spec. To unsuspecting drivers at the lights, it looked like an off duty taxi, right up until it launched and vanished

1788912784521.webp
 
America spent decades watching independent dreamers promise world beating exotics, only to deliver lawsuits, vaporware, or awkward kit cars. Steve Saleen broke that frustrating curse by skipping the grand speeches and building an uncompromising homologation racer.

Debuting as a clean sheet project, the 2003 Saleen S7 wrapped an autoclave carbon fiber body over a lightweight 4130 steel and aluminum honeycomb chassis. Tipping the scales at barely 2,800 pounds, its sculpted aerodynamic underside created full ground effect downforce, generating enough suction at 160 miles per hour to theoretically drive upside down along a tunnel ceiling.

Mid mounted behind the cockpit sat an all aluminum 7.0 liter naturally aspirated V8 pushing 550 horsepower through a 6 speed manual gearbox

1789173349190.webp
 
In 1948, Preston Tucker challenged Detroit with a vehicle that looked and drove like tomorrow. The Tucker 48, known as the Torpedo, was an absolute mechanical revelation. Powered by a modified 334 cubic-inch flat-six helicopter engine mounted in the rear, it delivered 166 horsepower and an impressive 120 mph top speed.

Its true genius lay in safety features decades ahead of their time. It boasted a padded dashboard, a passenger crash chamber, pop-out windshields, and its signature "Cyclops Eye"... a central third headlight that mechanically swiveled with the steering wheel to illuminate dark corners.

Detroit's establishment was terrified. Suddenly, Tucker was crippled by a relentless SEC investigation and a highly publicized fraud trial. Although fully acquitted on all charges in 1950, the damage was irreversible. The factory was shuttered after just 51 cars were built. Today, those surviving Torpedos are multimillion-dollar monuments to an American visionary who was crushed for being right too soon.

1789173520269.webp
 
When the November 1974 issue of Hot Rod hit newsstands, Brad LoVette made a very specific promise in print... any halfway competent enthusiast could build a mid-engine supercar in 80 hours for $5,000 flat.

That claim landed because the car was real. Brad had tracked down actual body molds from a genuine McLaren M8B Can Am racer and built a tubular steel spaceframe around them. What arrived at your garage door was a hand-laid fiberglass body, a rolling chassis, and gullwing doors that flipped forward on entry. You chose your own Chevrolet small block and a Corvair transaxle, then bolted everything together yourself.

The finished car weighed under 1,900 lbs and drove away street-legal. Gone in 60 Seconds used one the same year. Hollywood had noticed before the rest of America caught up

1789173780632.webp
 
Uriel Jones played drums on "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," and roughly half of the classic Motown catalog. In 1971 he had a very practical problem. His 1968 Corvette sat in the driveway looking gorgeous and completely failing to fit his drum kit.

So Jones walked into Chuck Miller's Styline Customs shop with a request. Miller called in Harry Bentley Bradley, a man who had spent 4 years in GM's styling department before going on to design the original Hot Wheels toy cars. Together they grafted a fiberglass shooting brake roofline onto the Corvette. Jones nicknamed it the Drum Buggy.

It took first place at the Detroit Autorama and landed in Car and Driver the following July. Orders flooded in, Ralph Eckler started producing the conversion kits, and suddenly America learned that the Corvette had been missing a roofline it never knew it needed

1789174038906.webp
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 7 (members: 0, guests: 7)
Back
Top