Had someone ask me the other day-"Which car in "Bullitt" was really the fastest?" The answer is the Charger. Ford supplied 5 Mustangs, all 390 / 4-speeds. The problem was the 390 was a truck motor-tons of torque, but not really a high-performance platform. Ford hastily made the 390 an option in 1967 becuase you could get a 396 in a Camaro and a 400 in a Firebird. All a 289 Mustang was going to see of a 396 Camaro or 400 Firebird is the taillights. Sadly, that was true for the 390 as well. Motor Trend tested a 396 Camaro, a 390 Mustang, and a 400 Firebird in 1967. The Camaro was the quickest in the 1/4-posting a 14.8 second time. The Firebird posted a 15.1 second time, and the Mustang a 15.6. That may not sound like a lot-but in drag racing 1/10th is one car length. So the Firebird smoked the Mustang by 5 car lengths, and the Camaro did it by 7. That's not even a race. Anyhow-Ford had the contract to supply cars for Warner Brothers. Steve McQueen didn't want two Fords in the chase. He thought it would be hokey to have the bad guys driving a Fairlane. GM and Chrysler refused to help out-citing Ford's contract. So McQueen and Cary Loftin-the stunt coordinator bought the Charger off the showroom floor of a Bay Area Dodge Dealer with their own money. The Charger was a 440 / 4-speed. In early practice Bill Hickman-the Charger driver, left McQueen and Loftin ( who shared the duty of driving the Mustang ) so badly that they couldn't even film it. Steve McQueen was furious. Cary Loftin and his chief mechanic, Max Balchowsky-hopped up one of the Mustangs with headers, and shorty glasspacks, an Edelbrock intake and 750 Holley carb and a Mallory distributor. That's why it sounds so badass on the soundtrack.  The Charger was still quicker in a drag race, but now they could film it, without Hickman having to slow down and wait for Loftin / McQueen. This happened other times. In the "Smokey and the Bandit II"-director / stuntman Hal Needham had a big problem. In the first "Bandit" if he or Burt Reynolds wanted to smoke the tires, it was easy-with the 400 cubic inch '77 T/A's. If the stunt car was a 4-speed, just pop the clutch. If it was an automatic, powerbrake it a little, and then floor it. ( If you watch the film sometimes you see a clutch pedal and you can hear Reynolds shifting it. In other scenes you can see the automatic shifter on the console ) However by 1980-the 400 inchers were no more, and were replaced with the anemic 301 Turbo. ( Honestly-why didn't they just buy some low-mileage '79's with the 400 Pontiac and 403 Olds engines-they'd smoke the tires and wer e'nt even a year old ) Hot Rod magazine howled to the high heavens. Their 400, 4-speed '79 test car ripped off a blistering 14.61 in the 1/4. ( Hot Rod was faster than all the other buff mags, because Motor Trend, Road &Track etc-launched with"some wheelspin" and all shifts were lift-throttle-they all ran 15.20's.) Hot Rod revved to 3,500-4,000 rpm and dropped the clutch hard-which allowed the posi-equipped T/A to rocket off the line. And they powershifted. Hence the much quicker time. Anyhow-their 1980 Turbo model while supposedly only being down 10 hp from the 400's-couldn't smoke the tires on dry pavement!! It ran a 16.30 in the 1/4. Ugh. They didn't have anywhere near the power of the 400 inchers. So Needham had nitrous oxide installed on one of the 1980 T/A's used in filming. It was strictly the "Burnout" car. It's said the stunt crew of the "Rockford Files" used '78 Firebirds until the series ended in 1981 because star James Garner didn't like the front end of the '79-81 models and said they were "dogs" He was right. The show went through several gold Firebirds in it's 1974-81 run. Some were Formula 400s, some were base models. We know the 400s had balls, but even the base models usually had 350 Pontiacs which had some oomph. The last '77-78 models-even thought GM was playing musical engines because of smog laws- in the base model in California-you could get ( I'm sure the producers used California models ) a 350 Chevy, which still ran pretty damn good. The non-turbo 301 V8 of 79-81 wheezed out 135 hp. That's why they were "dogs".  The "Dukes of Hazzard" wrecked 216 '68-70 Chargers during the show's 1979-85 run. A funny story-the stunt crew of "Dukes" and the stunt crew of "Knight Rider" had a friendly contest. Most of the Chargers they wrecked were clunkers-some 318 2bbl models. The Duke guys put a healthy 440 in GL26, and some Koni shocks, and aftermarket front and rear sway bars on it. The Knight guys figured the WS6 suspension of the '83 T/A was good enough, but they swapped the 305 for a Traco-built 350 crate engine. I don't remember who won, but I remember reading an article in a magazine that the stunt drivers griped constantly after ward that the mechanics couldn't make all the cars run and handle like GL26 or "Super Kitt"!!  Mastermind     

I thought magazine writers were supposed to be objective.....

A trend that really rubs me the wrong way lately is the buff magazines having comparison's and then declaring the car they like the winner, regardless of test results. Here's a few really offensive ones. "Bandit vs General Lee". The magazine found a couple guys one with a '69 Charger done like the "Dukes of Hazzard" car, and one with a black and gold '77 Trans-Am. Since the Charger had a high-compression 440 V8 with real dual exhausts and the T/A's 8:1 400 was choked with a catalytic converter and other smog gear, obviously the Charger was quicker in a drag race. However-the T/A trounced the Charger in every other performance category. The skidpad-the T/A ripped off a blistering .82g. The Charger had a UPS truck-like .67g. In 70mph panic stopping-the T/A stopped consistently in 144 ft. The Charger took like 212 feet, and got worse with every try. The T/A smoked it in the slalom, and in lap time around Willow Springs. At the end of the article-they declared the Charger the winner. Huh? How does that work?  Another one tested a Mustang GT against a BMW M3. The Mustang was equal to or better than the M3 in every single category-0-60, 1/4 mile, slalom, braking, lap time around the track, everything. And the Mustang cost $35,000, the BMW $64,000.  They declared the BMW the winner. Another one was subcompact performance cars. They tested a Subaru WRX, a VW Golf GTI, a Honda Civic SI, a Nissan Sentra SER, and a MazdaSpeed 3. The Subaru was the best in every performance category, and was the lowest priced.  They declared the VW the winner.  In a high end sports car comparo-they pitted a Porsche 911 Turbo against a Corvette Z06, a Nissan GT-R, an Aston-Martin V12 Vantage, and Audi R8. The Corvette and the GT-R were the consistent performance winners. The Nissan was quicker 0-60, but the 'Vette was quicker in the 1/4. The Nissan was better in the slalom, but the 'Vette was quicker on the track ( by small margins either way ). The others were consistently behind. The 911 did win the braking test. They said the one they liked the best was the Aston Martin, even though it placed last in almost every test. Why? The exhaust sounded cooler than the others, and it felt like a "real" sports car. The others just didn't feel the same. Huh? I've never driven an Aston Martin, but I have driven a Z06 'Vette, and a GT-R and a 911 Turbo and an R8. They are all ungodly fast and don't suffer fools lightly. If you have 100K+ to spend on a badass sports car, you really can't go wrong with any of them. But the Aston was the priciest, and had the lowest performance-if you consider 12 second 1/4's and 180+ top speed "low" performance-the others ran low 11 and high 10 second 1/4s and had 200 mph top speeds. If you want to pretend your James Bond, I guess that would be the way to go. I was curious as to why they didn't have a Jaguar F type. With 575 hp and all-wheel drive, I would think it would be right up there with the 'Vette and the GT-R. Maybe Jaguar didn't have one in their test fleet. I get personal preferences. I'd rather have a '60's 427 Stingray than a new Z06, even though the Z06 will run off and leave it. I'd rather have a '69-70 Boss 302 than a new Shelby GT350R even though the new car will smoke it in every performance category. But if I'm writing an article for a magazine-I'm not going to tell the reader that he should invest 70-100K in a 50 year old car instead of a brand-new one that has twice the performance, a warranty etc.  It just blows my mind. And they've been doing it for 50 years. I remember a motorcycle test one time-they were comparing 750cc "Superbikes"-this was the early '70's when 750cc was a "big" motorcycle motor, not like now where their pushing 2 liters. Anyhow, they compared a Honda, a Triumph, a Kawasaki and a Yamaha. The Kawasaki was a 2-stroke triple. The Triumph was a four-stroke triple, and the Honda and Yamaha were four-stroke four-cylinders. The Kawasaki blew the others away in 0-60 and 1/4 mile. It ran something like 12 flat or 11.90 which was ungodly even for a bike back then. The others weren't even close. They declared the Honda the winner-because it was the smoothest and easiest to ride. They said the Kawi would smoke the tire or wheelie too easy if you weren't careful with the throttle. Guess which bike everyone wanted to buy? Today those Kawis have a "Cult" following. I'd buy one if I could find one that wasn't priced in the stratosphere.  Anyhow-I think they should be more objective. Numbers don't lie. Yes, their entitled to their opinion-but be reasonable.  Mastermind

R.I.P. Rocky Johnson.....

On January 15th Rocky Johnson passed away at the age of 75. He was a wrestler from the '70's until his retirement in 1991. Him, and Pat Patterson, Peter MaVia, Bruno Sammartino were the pioneers. He is also the father of WWF Star and Movie star Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson who's been in several of the Fast&Furious movies and the recent "Hobbes&Shaw".  Everyone who ever met him said what a friendly guy he was, always willing to talk to fans and shake hands. Condolences to Dwayne Johnson and his family during this rough time. Mastermind

"Nice Guy" Scores big....Not!!! This is why I hate the internet....

There's a video blowing up on You Tube about a guy who found a 1967 Shelby Mustang GT500 in a barn in Iowa that had been stored since 1980. Their playing it up about what a wonderful guy the buyer is because he called in a respected Shelby Expert to appraise the car and agreed to offer the owner what the appraiser said was fair. What Bullshit. First off, the owner knows damn well Shelby Mustangs are worth a mint and she wasn't going to give it away for a song. Secondly-this prick wanted to protect himself and make sure it was original-which it wasn't. The appraiser said someone had swapped a 427 short block in and used the 428 heads and intake etc. It didn't have a numbers-matching engine. If he restored it the best he could do would be to find a date-correct 428 Police Interceptor block-a "Moon Rock" and install that. It had an aftermarket Hurst shifter, and there was some rust damage. Still the appraiser said it was worth $60,000. Restored, it would be worth $150,000-200,000. I don't know why it rubbed me the wrong way so bad, but it did. They never talked to the owner-it's not like she was a demented old lady who's son had bought it before being deployed to Viet Nam and being killed and she stored it for 50 years, and pulled out the window sticker and said "Well, he paid $4,500 for it.". And the guy felt bad. He wasn't so altruistic and not wanting to screw the owner-he was covering his own ass. And if you can you can spend $60,000 on a car that needs another $30,000 worth of work-F#4k you!!!  I don't want to hear what a philanthropist you are, because you paid someone market value for an Ultra-rare car-that they knew was Ultra-rare, and they probably agreed to sell it to you for the professional appraisal, because they were greedy bastards and didn't want to quote you a price too low!!!  I't 's played like everyone had a happy ending. I don't know why it made so freaking mad, but it did. Mastermind.