More Assholes of the month.......

Popular Hot Rodding is featuring these guys this month and it makes me sick. There's two guys that know each other and they both butchered prisitne, numbers-matching 1973 Trans-Ams. One was Brewster Green and the other Buccaneer Red. Both of these idiots installed LS7 Corvette engines and a six-speed automatic and all the electronics. They also installed DSE front and rear subframes, rack&pinion steering, and custom 9 inch Ford rearends, and Wildwood 4-wheel disc brake systems. Of course the magazine and the owners raved about how fast, good handling and cool they were. My question is Why??  #1. The engine / tranny combo. '73 T/A's came stock with a 455 and either an M21 Muncie 4-speed or a TH400. The LS7 'Vette motor that makes 505 hp costs $15,995 through GMPP. Mast Motorsports sells hot rod LS engines, and their 550 hp model sells for $12,995. Jim Butler performance or Kaufmann Racing will build you a 455 Pontiac engine guaranteed to produce 550 hp and run on 89 octane pump gas for $7,500. So it wasn't that the LS motors made more power for less money. No they made the same power for DOUBLE the price, and now the car isn't remotely original, it's ruined in my opinion.  # 2. The suspension. 1970's T/A's are, even today-one of the best handling cars on the planet. For example-Road&Track tested a 2011 Camaro SS against a 2011 SRT8 Hemi Challenger. On the skidpad-the Challenger-shod with P245/45ZR20 Goodyear Eagles pulled .85g. The Camaro, running P245/45ZR20 front and P275/45ZR20 Pirelli Pzeros pulled .88g. By contrast- Car and Driver's 1979 Trans-Am test car scored a very-close .82g on S-rated P225/70R15 Goodyear Polysteel radials! It doesn't take a genius to do this math-if the old T/A had some fat, modern, ZR-rated rubber it would easily surpass these state-of-the-art modern ponycars. Year One sells 17X9 Snowflake wheels for just this purpose. P275/40ZR17 BFG Comp T/A's fit nicely in the stock wheelwells. Year one also makes 17X9 Rally II's and "Honeycomb" wheels both of which would look stock on the '73's. Besides the tires, if you wanted to upgrade the T/A's handling beyond it's already stellar status-urethane bushings, KYB or Koni shocks and subframe connectors tighten things up immensely without making the ride too rough. 1973 T/A's have a 15:1 ratio steering box. If you want to quicken up the steering-the 1978-81 WS6 box is available in the aftermarket and it has a 14:1 ratio. If you want to go quicker still, the 1983-92 WS6 box is a bolt-in replacement, and it has a 12.7:1 ratio!!. A guy with a "Macho T/A" did this in a magazine and his car pulled .95g on the skidpad. That's modern Corvette, and BMW M3 territory. A 2012 Shelby GT500 Mustang could only pull .95g. That's a bunch for a basically stock leaf-spring, solid axle rear suspension car! All-wheel-drive Audi R8s and Nissan GTRs with thousands of dollars in stabilty-control devices are putting up numbers around 1.04g, but considering that their $100,000+ dollar cars, that's not appreciably better than Herb Adams' 43 year old solid-axle design!! Popular Hot Rodding themselves did the same thing-upgraded sway bars, chocks, subframe connectors etc-to a beater '76 Camaro a couple years ago. The called it "Project G/28" and as I recall they got pretty close to 1.00g. WITHOUT replacing the front and rear subframes and whole suspension system!  # 3. The Brakes. The stock front disc / rear drum setup on a '70's T/A isn't adequate to stop the car safely in daily driving or on a weekend trip to the drags?  I had a friend who autocrossed his '76 T/A for years, and competed in vintage races at Laguna Seca against Shelby Mustangs, Camaros, Corvettes etc, winning many class championships. We discovered that if we used Police-Spec Bendix D52 front pads and Dot 5 fluid, that the brakes didn't fade. In fact-they made a little noise and weren't super when they were dead cold-like just leaving for work in the morning. Whether driving on the street or track-the hotter they got, the better they worked!  I fail to see why you would need a $3000 Wildwood or Brembo system, even if you were autocrossing it. What really irks me is there were only 4,802 '73 T/A's ever built. There was over 315,000 T/A's built from 1976-79 alone. ( Smokey and the Bandit really drove sales ). Why couldn't he butcher one of those? Or one of the millions of beater 1970-81 Camaros and Firebirds out there?  I know I sound like a broken record but why can't these idiots put these LS motors in a Beater Tempest or Malibu? Why does it always have to be a for-real numbers-matching SS396 or GTO?  I guess I know the answer-there's too many people with more money than brains. Mastermind