a Budget "Cross-Breed" resto we can all appreciate..

I often rail about people putting modern Chevy LS engines and trannys in old GM Iron at five times the cost of restoring the powertrain that came in the car. I saw a car in "Street Rodder" the other day that was quite refreshing. The guy had a gorgeous red 1961 Impala coupe. For power it had a 500 inch Cadillac engine out of a '76 Eldorado backed up by a BOPC ( Buick, Olds, Pontiac, and Cadillac all share the same bellhousing bolt-pattern, only Chevrolet is different )  TH400. He also had the better 1970-73 heads, an Edelbrock Performer intake and some TTI headers on it. Needless to say with 500 cubes and a TH400, it ran a lot better than it did with the old 348 / Powerglide combo and cost a LOT less to build than a 348 / 409. The car was good-looking, fast, and "Old school" enough-i.e. an engine with a distributor and a carburator instead of coil packs and injectors,-and a tranny that had a vacuum modulator instead of sixteen electric shift solenoids that someone who wasnt a gearhead couldn't tell it wasn't stock. That's what made it so cool. While were on the subject, a 472 or 500 Cad engine is a good, cheap way to infuse some massive torque into a low-budget project. They don't rev like a 454 Chevy or even a 455 Pontiac, but boy do they have ungodly torque--like 550 lbs ft at 3,000 rpm.  There was a company-I'll try to look them up that made a motor mount kit to put the 472 / 500 motors into the '78-88 GM "G" bodies-i.e. Cutlass, Monte Carlo, Regal etc. What a dynamite low-budget sleeper that would be!  Mastermind