The Right way to "Restify"!!

I mentioned in an earlier post that I was a little peturbed at the way some enthusiast magazines are building their Musclecar based project cars. Hot Rod just had one called "Project Disco" based on a 1979 Z/28 Camaro. If they wanted to make it '70's style cool-they should have built a snarling small or big block and maybe added a Richmond 5-speed, and flared the fenders to clear monster tires on Center Line or Minilite wheels. What did they do? Put a 2010 LS3 fuel-injected Corvette motor in it! How is that "Disco" or late '70's chic?  Popular Hot Rodding has one called Project Olds, which is based on a 1965 Cutlass. They've already got 40 grand invested in it, and their not finished. And like I said earlier, it has a Baer 4-wheel disc brake system worthy of a NASCAR Nextel Cup champion, a Hotchkiss air ride suspension and sway bars, special front upper and lower control arms, special rear trailing arms, 18 inch wheels and tires, Recaro-type bucket seats, a beefed up 700R4 tranny, and an aluminum headed-roller-cammed 455 Olds engine. The pricetag and option list is identical for their "Project Talledega" a Nascar-themed 1975 Chevelle Laguna, the only difference being the 408 inch solid-roller small-block Chevy for power. Same for a 1965 Mustang called "Project Streetfighter". Wildwood 4-wheel discs, aftermarket rack and pinion steering, suspension,  subframe connectors, recaro seats, and a roller cammed 427 inch stroker motor backed by a Tremec five speed.. Doubtless these cars are wicked fast and fun to drive, but big deal!! Anyone can buy a car for $5,000 bucks, put another 35 or 40 grand into it and make it badass. I'm not impressed. What did impress me was a 1965 Pontiac Catalina and a 1964 Olds 442 that I saw at Hot August Nights last year. The Catalina had American Racing Torq-Thrust mags on it, and at first glance, just looked like a well-maintained or restored '60's Pontiac.  It was a wicked sleeper, however. Closer inspection and a conversation with the owner revealed that it had power front disc brakes pirated from a 1971 Catalina. It also had wrist-thick front and rear sway bars that came off a 1966 Pontiac Ambulance. The Torq-thrust mags looked period correct, but they were 16 inch, and shod with 255/50/VR16 Goodyear Eagles. The engine looked stock, but instead of a garden-variety 389, it was 400 out of a the same 71 Cat that suppled the disc brakes, with a stroker crank to make it 461 inches. It had ported 6X heads, the long-branch exhaust manifolds had been ported and extrude-honed, the cam was an Eddelbrock Torker grind, and it had an Edelbrock Performer intake painted Pontiac blue, topped by a 750 Carter AFB. His dyno sheet showed that even with iron exhaust manifolds, the motor pumped out 429 hp and a Godzilla-like 544 lbs ft of torque. This big car would literally spin its tires as long as you wanted to stay on the throttle, handled like a slot car, and looked bone-stock! And the guy had $18,000 in it, including the $3,500 purchase price of the car!  The 1964 442 was similar. It looked stock, right down to the wheels. But the engine wasn't a 330, it was a 350 out of a 75 Cutlass. But it had 1968-72 350 heads on it, which raised the compression from 8:1 to about 9.5:1. It had a W31 cam which gave it a badass lope, but stable idle. It had an Edelbrock Performer RPM manifold painted the factory color, and a Petronix electronic ignition under the point-type cap. It had a 4-speed, but it wasn't a Muncie. It was a T10 with a 3.44 low gear and 2.28 second. It also had 75 Firebird front spindles and disc brakes, and Trans-Am front and rear sway bars. It also had a 1984 T/A steering box with the ultra-fast 12.7:1 ratio. The stock-looking wheels had 225/60VR15 BFG Comp T/A tires on them. It handled like a Trans-Am, and ran like a Z06 Corvette, and looked like any other 64 Cutlass. And the guy had less than 25 grand in it.  The point I'm making is, both of these cars had incredibly improved acceleration, braking, and handling, without ruining the essence of the cars and without spending 50 or  100 grand. People may say I'm splitting hairs, but in my mind a 65 Malibu that someone swapped the 283/ Powerglide setup for a 350 / Turbo 350 like they might have done in say-1969 is cool. A 65 Malibu with a modern LS motor and an electronic six-speed auto is not.  Like I said before, you wouldn't buy a 1965 Harley-Davidson Sportster and put a Fuel-injected Twin-Cam and six-speed tranny out of a 2009 Softail would you?  If you bought a WWII vintage .45, it might have an enlarged ejection port or oversize target sights, installed by a gunsmith in the '50's, but you wouldn't put a laser beam and a compensator on it would you?  You buy something old because it's different from what's new, good and bad. Mastermind