hot auto review

Looking for that wicked “thumping” sound out of your engine? The latest camshafts from Comp Cams are specifically engineered for ‘69 to ‘95 Ford Windsor 221-351w engines and promise to deliver that thump.

When you think about the car of your dreams most likely a “thumping” high performance sound is one of the first things that comes to mind. Now anyone with a Ford Windsor 221-351w engine built between 1969 and 1995 and originally equipped with a flat tappet valve train can get that sound. While these camshafts were designed for the late 5.0/351W firing order:1-3-7-2-6-5-4-8, they are compatible with all 1963-1995 Small Block Ford engines, with a simple firing order change required for early motors.
 
The Thumpr? Camshafts were a special challenge for the COMP Cams(R) engineers, who are usually focused on delivering the highest horsepower and torque figures attainable with their camshaft profiles independent of engine sound. The Thumpr(TM) line delivers something different; true high performance engine sound by “tightening” the lobe separation angle of the camshaft. Comp says these camshafts don’t sacrifice drivability so now you can have your performance and pretty cool sound, too. The cams are available in three different levels, termed Thumpr(TM), Mutha(TM) Thumpr(TM) and Big Mutha’ Thumpr(TM), for street rods, musclecars and hot rod trucks. To check ‘em out visit www.compcams.com.

Chip Foose is a household name. People who have never even picked up HOT ROD or any other car magazine know who he is, thanks to the television shows and guerrilla marketing of all things Foose. But back before he was the Chip Foose, he was a student at the prestigious Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, majoring in transportation design. Growing up with his father, Sam, one of the top hot rod builders in the business, Chip became proficient in the art of hot rod building and showed a particular talent for design work; Art Center gave him the tools to get where he is now.

While in school, Chip's graduation project was a Chrysler-sponsored niche-market design concept called the Hemisfear, an all-aluminum, two-seater, mid-engine car. Chip put 400 hours into building a 1/5-scale model out of fiberglass, billet aluminum, and wood (the tires) and painted it in a beautiful violet and pearl hue. Gray Baskerville featured it in Roddin' at Random in the April '91 issue of HOT ROD, and his last line said, "With results like this, we can only hope that somebody in Detroit has his eye on young Chip."

Based on the career he's had and is still enjoying, it's probably a good thing that Chip didn't end up at an OE, though a few years after the Hemisfear design came a production car looking strikingly similar to it-the Plymouth Prowler. The first versions of the car were even the same color as the scale model. Chip didn't get any credit for the car's design, but the rest of us know the truth. Chip had always wanted to build a real version of the Hemisfear and had actually started on it while he worked for Boyd Coddington in the mid-'90s. He had a chassis mostly done, and Chrysler got Dick Landy to build a snortin' Hemi for the project, but it stalled and got put on the back burner.

Fast-forward to 2005, and Chip is a superstar with all kinds of licensing deals. One of those deals was with RC2 Corp, a maker of toy cars, to produce die-cast versions of Chip's most famous hot rods. The subject of the Hemisfear came up, and out of that conversation came a deal to fund the buildup of a running, driving version of the car under the JL Full Throttle brand. Chip's longtime dream now had legs, and design work began on the Hemisfear.

Originally there was to be just one car, but that changed with the involvement of Metalcrafters. Run by the Gaffoglio family and Mike Alexander (of the famous Alex-ander Brothers), Metalcrafters is a West Coast-based fabrication shop (for lack of a better term-the place is amazing) that's used by almost every OE manufacturer and a ton of high-end aftermarket companies. Chip talked to Metalcrafters about digitizing his model and making a fullsize foam buck out of it, and by the time they were done Metalcrafters had agreed to build the car, as well as another 49 that it would sell to anyone who wanted one.

The cars will all be built at Metalcrafters and will be sold through both Metalcrafters and Unique Performance in Texas. The price is $298,000, and there are numerous options. The cars you see here are the first two. Actually, the green one is preproduction car 1, built with the funding from JL Full Throttle, and the black car is serial number 1, now owned by Don Voth of Canada. The green car will stay with Chip. It was also the "placeholder" at the Barrett-Jackson Palm Beach auction where the winning bidder paid $330,000 for serial number 2, which came with a personal consultation with Chip to get the car built just the way he wanted.

When you pay that kind of money you have a lot of options, one of which is in the engine. The Hemisfear is powered by a Chrysler Hemi (duh), but not the Landy Hemi that Foose originally had for the car. These are new Mopar Performance 392 Hemi crate motors. The other choice is a Ford 5.4L DOHC engine, an option brought about by some legal mumbo-jumbo with DaimlerChrysler, who got possessive over the Hemi name. It was still being worked out as we write this-hence the option of a Ford powerplant. A car with a Ford (or any other non-Hemi) will be called a Foose Coupe instead of a Hemisfear.

Chip designed the car, Hotchkis Performance designed and built the suspension, and the engines are from Mopar Performance, but nearly everything else was done in-house at Metalcrafters, including the curved glass. The entire car was designed on the computer first (as you can see with all the CAD drawings on the opening spread of this story), then fabricated and tweaked as necessary. From Chip's scale model, Metalcrafters digitized the shape and computer-milled a fullsize version out of foam, which was then used as the buck to form the carbon-fiber body shell. The chassis is a combination of square and round tubing, and the suspension is independent at both ends, with rocker arm-actuated coilovers mounted behind the grille shell in the front and double wishbones in the rear. John Hotchkis and his crew at Hotchkis Performance designed the suspension to be much more road racer than street rod, and in initial testing at Buttonwillow Raceway in California, the car looked as if it worked very well. We seriously doubt that anyone who buys one of these cars will ever drive it hard enough to make a difference, but it's nice to know that the car works.

The 392 Hemi engines in the two cars seen here are stock except for the Hilborn stacks converted to EFI on the green car (the black car used a stock EFI intake), and each is mated to a ZF five-speed transaxle similar to what was used in a Pantera. The engine sits right behind the occupants' heads-neither of these cars currently has a separator panel between human and engine, but they will, as will all the others. The interior is small but very comfortable, and the materials are top-grade. Metalcrafters even fabricated the seats, which are some of the nicest chairs we've ever had the pleasure to fondle.

Since it's a scratch-built car, you may be wondering how it can be registered. It's actually sold as a component car and comes without the engine installed. That way it's not a turnkey runner, allowing buyers to register the Foose Coupes just as they would a kit car.

The Hemisfear/Foose Coupe is certainly not for everyone. It's a very expensive street rod, and the price tag would make driving it a pretty nerve-racking affair. But the car works and should be blindingly fast. If you've got 300 large burning a hole in your pocket and want the exclusivity of a one-of-50 Chip Foose signature car, get in line now. Plus, as investments go this might not be a bad one.

Here's a trend we're seeing more and more among pro car builders: building a car using the nicest starting point available. Remember Rod Saboury's original Pro Street '63 Corvette from the early '80s? Rod was barbecued relentlessly for buying a 100-point Bloomington Gold show car and then cutting it up, even though the end result was one of the finer show cars of the decade. His reasoning was that it's easier to start with a perfect car so you don't have to deal with repairs before getting into the fun stuff.

Back then, that was an uncommon way to build a car. Today, it seems to be the norm. There are more pro builders now than ever, due mostly to the radically increased demand for hot rods, especially modified musclecars. Starting prices for turnkey cars are usually in the six-figure range, and that level of financial commitment combined with the glut of builders has made many of the new buyers impatient. When that kind of cake is on the table and the clock is ticking, a pro builder (who's paid more for his hours of labor than the cost of parts) doesn't want to hassle with a rusty, bashed pile of junk. All that time saved not fixing or replacing floorboards, sheetmetal, and bent chassis is worth the much higher entry price of a low-mile, nonbeater car.

The latest example of this is the '66 Chevelle you see here, built by So-Cal Speed Shop for John Devine. Much more than just a suit, John is a car guy and wanted a hot rod, and as Vice Chairman and CFO of General Motors (now retired), he knew it had better be a GM product to save face. One his of buddies within GM is Mark Reuss, former head of GM Performance Division, who introduced him to Pete Chapouris of So-Cal Speed Shop. Naturally, the talk turned to hot rods, and John and Pete hatched a scheme during dinner one night to build a car. Actually, the first plan was to do a mid-'50s pickup. "I always wanted a hot rod pickup truck. I still do, but Pete talked me into a musclecar, so that's what we did."

The most ubiquitous musclecar is, of course, an early Camaro, but John realized they were too cliche. Besides, he had spent 32 years as a Ford exec before coming to The General and says, "I'd rather have an old Mustang than an old Camaro." So the pair decided to build a Chevelle. John says, "I like the way the '69 and '70 Chevelles look, but I settled on a '66 because it was less common." The hunt was on.

The trophy buck was located in Portland, Oregon, and it had a heck of a rack. The '66 Chevelle was purchased from the nephew of the original owner and had a mere 15,000 miles on the odometer. It's OK to start crying now. It came with every oil-change receipt acquired since the car left the dealership and all the gas receipts, too! The old girl must have kept the thing garaged, as it was completely rust-free and even the original weatherstripping was still in good shape. Blubbering, at this point, is acceptable. The car made the trip to So-Cal in the summer of 2004, and the build got under way. Thankfully, they didn't really cut up the virginal A-body. Pete says, "Most of the OEM parts used in the build are original, with the exception of the windshield and back glass."

As you can tell in the photos, the body was left stock. The only modifications were shaving the fender and rocker moldings, and a little work was done to the original hood to extend the center strip and adapt Corvette emblems to fit both the hood and trunk lid. Why Corvette emblems? Because soon after the car started coming together, GM came out with the Z06 Corvette and its phenomenal LS7 engine. It instantly became the natural choice for John's hot rod, so an LS7 crate motor went into the car backed by a Camaro six-speed.

"I wanted a car I could drive for the next 25 years," John says. "I wanted the performance of a modern car. I wanted that balance, but keeping the car as original as we could."

Stock '66 Chevelles aren't known for having modern-car handling and ride, so the stock suspension hardware was replaced with better parts. The front crossmember was cut for ground clearance and to clear the LS7's oil pan, and a Borgeson rack-and-pinion conversion brightened up the steering response. The suspension uses 2-inch-drop B-body spindles and the full Global West catalog. Stock pedals actuate big Baer brakes, and more Global West parts locate a Currie 9-inch. Bilstein shocks on all four corners make it work even better. The full Z06 electronic-management system was adapted to the Chevelle, including the cruise control.

Probably the most obvious deviation from stock is also one of the car's nicest parts: the interior. The basic Chevelle layout was left alone, but the stock front and custom rear seats were covered in a saddle-colored leather that is creamy smooth and smells like you're in the sweet spot of a baseball glove. Gabe's Custom Auto Interiors in Bloomington, California, stitched the luscious cowhide and also laid down German square-weave carpet. Snake-Oyl seatbelts hold John in place while he stares at a stock dash (with a Haneline engine-turned insert) and spins a stock steering wheel. Creature comforts come from a Vintage Air system and an iPod-ready stereo.

The end result is a car that was built with deep pockets containing a water-cooled checkbook, for sure. But it's also one of the nicest, cleanest, best-driving Chevelles we've ever seen. Does it bug you that the beginning point was a nearly perfect example of a stock '60s musclecar? Should they have started with something that wasn't so pristine? Before passing judgment, think about how you would have built it yourself, given an equivalent budget. Does the end justify the means?

Quick Inspection: '66 Chevrolet Chevelle
John Devine . Newport Beach, CA

Powertrain

Engine: It's a bone-stock LS7 crate motor, but what more do you need than 500 daily-driveable horsepower in a car that's meant to be driven daily? Jeff Johnson at Accurate Mobile Welding fabricated the 31-inch-long, 171/48-inch stainless steel headers to make them fit the stock Chevelle chassis. The mufflers are from MagnaFlow.

Power: Driven a new Z06 Corvette yet? If not, just know that it's the smoothest but nastiest 500 hp you'll ever experience.

Transmission: It's a T56 six-speed from a Camaro with a Z06 clutch and an Inland Empire Driveline driveshaft.

Rearend: The Currie 9-inch holds 3.89 gears and a TrueTrac diff.

Chassis

Frame: The frame is stock, low-mileage Chevelle with the front crossmember cut a little bit to clear the oil pan and give a little more ground clearance.

Suspension: Almost everything Global West offers for a '66 Chevelle was bolted to this one, including taller 2-inch-drop, B-body spindles and tubular control arms. A Borgeson variable-rate rack-and-pinion conversion replaces the stock recirculating ball box. The rear suspension uses more Global West parts with 1-inch-drop springs.

Brakes: The Baer brakes measure 14 inches in front and 13 inches in back, and the booster and master cylinder are from an '02 Corvette.

Wheels: The Budnik Muroc IIIs are a one-off design and finished in two-tone brushed nickel, sized 18x8 all around.

Tires: Dunlop SP2000s measure 255/45-18 in front and 285/50-18 in the rear.

Style

Body: Thankfully, they left the body mostly stock, with just a few subtle mods to give it a nod to the Corvette drivetrain.

Paint: Scott "Dirty" Howard and Pelle Forsberg did a lot of the fabrication, pre-assembly fit-up, and the final assembly, while Jesus Salas, Paco Castell, and Abe Rodriguez made the panels straight and painted it PPG black. Sean Dooley did the color-sanding and rubbing.

Interior: Gabe's Custom Auto Interiors made the inside of the car sweet with saddle-colored leather threads and a custom rear seat.