When the hood goes pop... What makes the jaw drop?

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slimjim

slimjim

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Its that all exciting time for me again. I'm headed overseas and I'm going to start blue printing my next build while I'm away. The blank canvas is a 69 barracuda coupe with the leaning power of tower. 100% original with 96k miles and only slight surface rust. After spending sometime contemplating which direction I'm going to go in, I started to wonder if there was an end all be all. A build that's at the top of the food chain. Now this is not another one of those "what should I build" threads. Not at all. This thread is going after the wow factor. A little survey one might say. If you walked up to an A-body at a car show what would make your jaw drop... When the you heard the hood pop? With no budget in sight. 340? 416 stroker? 440? 426, 472, 572 hemi? What about some boost? Or maybe something as crazy as an srt4 swap? What?
 
2 twin turbo 600 horse Hayabusa 4 cylinder two strokes. :D
 
What makes any engine stand out, is a clean engine compartment painted body color.
 
at car shows the sequential injected and turboed/supercharged era correct engines get the majority of my attention. The oddball stuff like a turboed 2.0l nissan in a datsun 1600 roadster and a spitfire with a toyota 1.6l and 5 speed result in me actually talking to the owner if their there, so maybe a mopar A4, or srt4. For the big bucks something transverse and awd would make me crap myself.
 
Any engine that looks like it actually gets used. If someone pops the hood and shows me a dirty looking small or big block with some bolt on mods and enough dirt, grease, oil and water stains to show that it actually gets driven then I'm impressed.

Yeah sure some giant hemi, or supercharger, tunnel ram, giant turbo or whatever is cool to look at once or twice. But all that perfectly polished, high dollar speed equipment tells me is that the car spends more time parked in a garage than it does on the road. Sure, it LOOKS fast. Heck it probably is fast. But it never GOES fast, so who cares? Just some rich guys life-sized car model at that point, sits on a shelf 99% of the time and occasionally gets dragged out to remind people how "cool" it's owner is for paying someone else to build it. Boring.
 
Yeah I'm not a huge fan of the everything chrome and polished myself. It is possible to drive a car like a rental and have everything clean under the hood tho. It's nothing a couple hours of detailing can't fix
 
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Popping the hood to see all factory stuff is still there and not a bunch of cheap chrome bolt-ons. But the Chevy and Ford guys never give mine a second look. Too bad for them.
 
I like period-correct equipment, nothing billet or shiny. My car is a 1967 and I want under the hood to look like a 1967 enthusiast built it to be his daily driver. Clean goes without saying but used is key as well! Of course a hemi is cool but the small block mopar of the day was more common and hard to beat if done correctly.
JMHO--------------DR---------Cheers to all:)
 
TrailBeast said:
2 twin turbo 600 horse Hayabusa 4 cylinder two strokes. :D
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friend of mine runs two of those hayabusa's 4 cylinder in a ack attack bike streamliner at the saltflats , and they are de-tuned down to 600hp each with single turbo on each motor , they went over 376 plus mph with that liner . looking at 400 mph as the next step .
 
slimjim , since it in the plaining stages , design it a few different ways . because your the only one that should be wow'd by it . well maybe the guy your smok'n by , should get wow'd . there are lots of threads dealing with mod's here , so you can pick the best of them . new or old school works . have at it , and have a great time with it .
 
Hemi's, tunnel Rams, etc are cool but I'd bet you'd have crowd around it all the time with a well built and clean slant with headers and a set of eye popping triple Webers on it.
 
pomonamissel said:
slimjim , since it in the plaining stages , design it a few different ways . because your the only one that should be wow'd by it . well maybe the guy your smok'n by , should get wow'd . there are lots of threads dealing with mod's here , so you can pick the best of them . new or old school works . have at it , and have a great time with it .
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I've used this forum a lot throughout the last 5 years and even relied heavily on it during both my last builds. I absolutely love building these old mopars. I'm just curious as to what many view as the holy grail of builds for our A-Bodies. I just took my dart to a show and I saw some really sweet mopar. Procharged 440 and a 528ci hemi side by side. It's what got me thinking about this holy grail question
 
One thing that will catch my eye is a set of injection stacks. I love stock and modified cars so I'm not inferring that one choice is better than another but there is nothing more impressive to me than an old school Hemi. - Even a 1st gen 331, 354, or 392.
 
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