Hot Rod November 2023

It’s been a busy month here at HOT ROD, with most of my time being occupied by the Dodge Coronet build we were working on as part of a Car Craft Video project. It’s a 1965 Coronet owned by a Vietnam veteran, and the car has been sitting for more than 20 years. We partnered with Amazon to completely rebuild it from a roller to an amazingly cool street machine. That was the most ambitious project we’ve taking on during our fledgling video series, and I couldn’t be prouder of how much the team accomplished. I’d like to take more credit for the work done on the car, but truth be told, the bulk of the work was done off camera, with the film crew and me there for the…

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20 Years Ago November 2003: 114 pages, $3.99 “Ford’s Baddest V-8 Ever” was the 5.4-liter supercharged alloy engine developed for the upcoming Ford GT. Senior Editor Matt King and photographer Randy Lorentzen (who shot the cover images) put together a six-page, component-by-component examination of the 500hp, 500 lb-ft mill. Stories about readers’ rides are typically newsstand winners, which is why that blurb took the prime top-of-page location. Technical Editor Steve Magnante profiled 10 reader cars that had been dyno tested on Power Tour. The dyno king was Mike Roy’s ProCharger-equipped ’71 Monte Carlo, which not only registered 708 hp but was a 1,500-mile Long Hauler to boot. MSD’s “Best Ignition Yet” was the new Programmable Digital-7 Plus ignition system with its innovative Slew Rate Rev Limiter, which King said “made…

PRESENTED BY When drivers rolled up to the Indianapolis Raceway Park starting line to begin their runs at the 1963 NHRA Nationals, they faced not the familiar gyrations of an enthusiastic flag-waving track worker, but an odd-looking pole covered in vertical rows of different colored lights. The origins of the original countdown starter are somewhat murky (says Wikipedia, anyway), but according to the September 1963 issue of HOT ROD, the new starting system was the brainchild of NHRA Eastern Division Director Ed Eaton and was assembled by Lew Bond, an electronics technician based in Maryland. The name of Bond’s company, Drag-Tronics, appeared on the equipment when it was set up at Indy. The September 1963 mention in HRM’s NHRA department “The National Scene” explained that the new starter system “was…

I first met Steve Strope in 1995 while photographing his 1965 Chevy El Camino at what is now known as Summit Motorsports Park in Norwalk, Ohio. That car/truck appeared in the October ’96 issue of HOT ROD. Sometime later, Steve showed up unannounced in this author’s Van Nuys, California, driveway with a 1966 Dodge Charger that would go on to become Skully, the fully custom-built rod that was featured in the October 1998 issue of HOT ROD and on HOT ROD’s Top Ten list for 1999. Skully went from totally stock to a street machine that blew everyone away. When Steve showed me the car in stock form and explained what he had planned for it, I thought the plans were overly ambitious, but damn if he didn’t pull it…

Like many of the cars that come to his shop, Jeff Lilly described Edgar’s Galaxie as “spent,” saying it had been cobbled together with nearly any part he could find to keep the car the road. “The body was so rough even the convertible rear drain area below the back window was rotted through,” said Jeff. “A rebody is not really the word for this car,” continued Jeff. “The only original parts we could use were some of the convertible top mechanisms.” Since there are hardly any reproduction parts for these big Fords, you must find decent used parts or fabricate new ones from scratch. Jeff’s team used the quarter-panels from a Galaxie hardtop found in Arizona, along with one of that car’s doors, a left fender, and the hood.…