Compact Cars
Have you ever noticed how some people can take their car to the strip and look as if they’ve raced all their lives, while others look totally out of control in the bleach box and during staging? More often than not, the driver with the calm, cool and collected approach seems to regularly trigger the win light. The reason for this smoothness isn’t completely initiated by the driver; in most instances, it is the correlation between man and machine.
There’s no denying the popularity of Camaros; they have been a rodding favorite since their initial release in 1967. The first-generation Camaro has always been an enthusiast car because it is small, lightweight and had a sports-car-design feel to it. Underneath, the early Camaros were based on a Nova platform and featured many good mechanical attributes. Right from the start, they became a popular choice for teenagers and young adults, and most of the performance enthusiasts wanted the SS model that came with a choice of a strong-running small- or big-block engine. Things haven’t changed much, because they are still a popular choice for enthusiasts to restore or modify.
When the engineers at Chevrolet designed the fuel inlet and fuel cap for the early Nova, they must not have looked at the rest of the car. Novas aren’t called shoeboxes for no reason; with the exception of the wheels–and that gas cap–they are basically square. Wheels have to be round, but the gas cap, well….
If you are driving down the highway in an older car, you are at a major disadvantage if you have to make a quick stop. Many of the high-performance cars being built today have fantastic stopping power, and if you can’t stop as well as the car in front of you, that could certainly be a big problem. The owner of this ’55 Chevy improved it with front disc brakes that work well, but he wanted the Chevy to stop even better, so he decided to add rear disc brakes.
Replacing interior components is not usually that difficult, but interior repair–especially seat repair–requires skills, equipment and training which many enthusiasts may not have acquired. To find out what it takes to make a replacement seat, we went to the Performance Choice division of Mid America Motorworks in Effingham, Illinois.
Unscrupulous Swap Meet Hawks Are Peddling (for More Money) 2.00-inch Ramʼs Horn Manifolds for the Bigger 2.50-Inch Design.
In the eyes of the Chevy enthusiast, ultimate acceleration reigns supreme. Everything plays second fiddle in the performance-oriented minds of many enthusiasts, including handling, comfort and so on—besides, those things are tough to quantify. Acceleration and top speed are what we are into and unfortunately, all too often, last on the performance priority list is braking. Remember, no matter how quick or fast a particular Chevy is, and no matter how well that Bow Tie handles, no matter how plush it is, no matter how straight the body panels are or how crafty it’s built, eventually you have to get the thing to stop.
Wheel choice is probably the single biggest factor in determining the direction of your project. Just as the thought of installing stock steel wheels on anything other than a restoration seems absurd, the idea of installing race-styled wheels on a restoration may be just as absurd. Or is it?
