NCC Enclosed Auto Transport

08/29/2023

05/21/2014

1970 Ford Boss Torino "All In"

This weekend I attended the F100 Super Nationals in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. It was primarily an F100 show, but they also considered it an “All Ford” show. I am very glad that this happened, because John Jinnings brought out his 1970 Ford Torino. John came all the way to Pigeon Forge from Churubusco, Indiana near Fort Wayne. He wanted to make a twist on the pro-touring scene by building a Ford instead of a Chevy product. Chevy guys have already been hitting it hard in the pro-touring world and have a huge aftermarket support. Ford has not nailed down the pro-touring market yet. Mustangs are finally starting to get greater aftermarket support for performance 4-links, front subframes, rack and pinions, etc., however, until now, the Mustang’s big brother, the Torino, has been forgotten. The Torino is basically Ford’s competitor to Chevrolet’s Chevelle. The Chevelle has huge aftermarket support and is a very popular pro-touring and grand-touring car. The Torino is a beautiful car, but has never been as popular as the Chevelle. John wanted to be different, so a Torino was an easy choice for this Ford fanatic.

John had a vision from the beginning for what he wanted out of his car. This car had always been in his mind’s eye and he wondered what he could do if he took on the challenge. He decided to go with big block Boss power to make the Torino scream down the road. Jon Kaase has a new line of engines called the Boss Nine engines based on the Boss 429. John chose a Boss 572 cubic-inch big block from Jon Kaase Racing Engines to ensure that he is able to leave his Chevy counterparts well behind. The motor is built to run hard and pushes 700 horsepower and 700 lb-ft of torque with ease. With racing fuel and a tune, this car can surpass 850 horsepower for the occasional track day. It has a custom eight-stack fuel-injection setup that looks absolutely sick under the hood. The car looks like a nice cruiser with a nice set of Budnik wheels on the outside. The car is pretty unassuming until the hood opens. The best part is that it has cutouts to make it even more unassuming. Normally the exhaust is relatively quiet, but when he opens the cutouts, the big block can rumble your insides. When John started up the car for us, my first thought was that it sounded good. It idled along nicely with a decent lope and tone. Then he opened up the cutouts and it changed completely. The deep lope rumbled so deep that I could feel the engine in my chest. It seemed like he had very restrictive mufflers to make it sound tame so that he could surprise people. He put all of this power through an AOD overdrive transmission built by Lentech. Most builders do not want to run an AOD with any decent amount of torque, but Lentech claims that they can handle upwards of 1,500 lb-ft of torque.

John did not have a straight line machine, but he wanted it to be able to take a corner also. He went to the skilled guys at Martz Chassis to help make his car take a corner without the body roll that is to be expected in a classic muscle car. Martz did not hold back when they built the entire chassis for this car. They used their 4-link setup in the rear and installed QA1 coilovers all around. Subframe connectors were also installed to keep the body stiff and make sure the Boss 572’s torque would not twist it. John went with a Ford 9” rear end with 3.50 gears and a Trac Lok system. It has 18x9.75 Budnik Spark wheels all around which I think look just right. Some cars have gigantic wheels that fail to look proportionate to the car, but these look just right. This car has serious going power and can handle in a corner, but Martz also installed Wilwood disc brakes all around to give it the stopping power needed.

The care taken on the details of this build is what makes it extremely unique. The interior is two-toned red and black seats which match the theme of the rest of the car. The Torino also has one of the sweetest dash’s I have ever seen from Dakota Digital. I normally think digital dashes in classics look odd, but this is one seriously clean gauge cluster. The theme for this car was “All In” and he incorporated that in the design. Right next to the passenger side taillight is a small pinstriped skull holding a deck of cards that says “All In.” I started looking at it more closely and noticed that the hat the skull was wearing had Ford on the brim. The skull holding the cards is obviously dead, but the cards he was holding told an even a better story. I am a poker player and there are special names for different hands. The skull is holding a hand with three ace’s and two eight’s, which is a full house. The full house with three ace’s and two eight’s is called the Dead Man’s Hand. It is a hand that nearly anyone would go all-in with. I find it awesome that he incorporated all of that into just a simple pinstripe on the rear of the car. This attention to detail is what makes cars like this unique. Sure, the giant motor and suspension tweaks are unique, but the details make it one-of-a-kind.

05/15/2014

The Super Sleeper Nova

My favorite type of performance vehicle is the sleeper. Sleepers are cars or trucks that look extremely unassuming or worn out, but they pack an unexpected punch. My favorite sleepers are station wagons with blown big blocks hiding under the hood that can eat your lunch stoplight to stoplight. Chevy Nova’s seem to be everywhere and it is not very often that you attend a car show without seeing one because of how common and versatile they are for different types of builds. Novas are plentiful and cheap to build compared to some other types of classic muscle cars. I like Novas, but if I pulled up next to a worn out, rusty ’72 Nova I would not think twice about it, however there is one I want to tell you about that is an entirely different story. I first heard about this car on the YouTube series Big Muscle, hosted by Mike Musto. If you have not watched this series, it is great. Go check it out!

This Nova was built by Keith Urban of Wheel to Wheel Powertrain. He had the idea, like many others have had, to build the ultimate sleeper. A lot of people dream of building the ultimate sleeper, but Kurt decided to take action to show everyone just how far he could take it. The car was brought to Detroit by the infamous Mike Steilow, but he lost interest in building it and sold it to Kurt. From the exterior, the car looks stock. The two biggest requirements to build a perfect sleeper are an extremely powerful motor, and near-stock, unassuming exterior and even interior to fool the competition. Keith put forth his best effort and went all out in both of these areas.

The original 7-inch wide steel wheels are in the front and he also wanted to keep the rear stock but get a bigger size tire for grip. Kurt had Stockton Wheel fabricate 10.5-inch wide wheels with the dish entirely on the inside to keep the stock look for the rear. He wrapped these wide rear wheels in 295/65R15 Mickey Thompson Street Radials to make it hook the massive power to the ground. Kurt was really meticulous to keep it looking stock while improving performance. He replaced the door, quarter and rear windows with polycarbonate windows to save on weight, but he had them beveled to look like the factory windows. Kurt was not playing around when he decided to build the ultimate sleeper. There was not any body work done at all except for pulling a dent out from the driver’s door. For safety, Kurt wanted a full rollcage built and tucked closely to the pillars to make it as low profile as possible. He did not want anyone seeing the rollcage at a stoplight and getting a hint of what the Nova was capable of.

Now, we have covered the outside appearance of this sleeper, however what is a sleeper without some power behind it? This Nova most definitely has some power behind it. The motor is from Wheel to Wheel(W2W) Powertrain and is a configuration they have used a few times before. It is an LS2 with All- Pro Heads that they have built specifically for boost. For a little extra oomph on top of the LS2, W2W threw on a pair of Rotrex superchargers to give the LS a little boost, literally. They also used twin Autowerkes active bypass valves to get the most out of the boost in the sweet spot. There are also two liquid-to-air intercoolers hidden in the fenders to keep the pressurized air as cool as possible because cold air is denser than warm air. Denser air means that you get more oxygen in a smaller volume and more oxygen means more power. This is why cold air intakes are a common upgrade to modern cars.

Kurt went kind of crazy with his Octane on Demand system. This system lets you utilize both pump gas and high-octane race gas at the same time without the use of any switches or k***s to turn on the race fuel. It has two complete fuel-delivery systems. The stock tank contains pump gas and a fuel cell in the rear contains the high-octane fuel. The engine has two sets of eight fuel-injectors. The primary injectors deliver the pump gas, and the secondary injectors, which are above the primary injectors, deliver the race fuel. They control how much of each is delivered via the Big Stuff 3 ECM. During normal driving, the ECM sends the fuel only to the primary injectors, but you can choose when all 16 injectors fire for optimal acceleration. You could set it, for example, to 70% throttle so that it would activate when you had the pedal 70% of the way to the floor. The nice thing about this is you do not have to worry about activating this by hand while driving, but can just floor it for ridiculous power. W2W set the Nova up to only activate all 16 injectors at wide open throttle. This way they can save the race fuel and make it last, but still have it on demand at full throttle. This is a simply amazing innovation and helps solidify this car’s sleeper status even more. In normal driving conditions it can be calm and collective, but at full throttle, both pump gas and race gas pour into the engine for maximum power.

This motor has been dyno’d at 1,160 horsepower at 7,500 rpm and 825 lb-ft of torque at 6,500 rpm. The crazy thing is, this car was not built to only be a weekend track cruiser. W2W has put this engine through some serious testing to make sure it will be reliable and drivable wherever you want to go. Kurt took this monster on the Hot Rod Power Tour which is a long trip for a 1,200 horsepower car of any kind. The Power Tour is generally about 1,500 miles, but that does not include the trip to the beginning of the Tour and the trip home at the end. He said that while idling in the Florida heat for hours on the Power Tour, the coolant temperature never went past 205 degrees Fahrenheit. I like powerful cars, but often they are unreliable because of the stress you have to put on them to achieve that much power. Kurt and the guys at Wheel to Wheel Performance did a fantastic job making this a track monster that can be driven reliably on the street with no worries. This car will turn 9’s in the quarter mile and then drive a few hundred miles back home from the strip with no complaints. This car is the epitome of a sleeper. Kurt has dubbed this one “Super Sleeper” for a reason. One of the best stories I have read from Kurt was about pulling up to tech inspection on the Power Tour. "In Gainesville, they barely glanced at me or the car when I pulled up to the tech inspection. I hardly rolled to a stop, somebody wrote a number on the back window, and I was gone. On my first run, I did a 10.19 at 141 mph and everybody started freaking out. They were shouting, 'get that thing back in here.' I even had to show them my NHRA competition license.” That is a testament to the Nova’s sleeper cred if I have ever heard one.

05/13/2014

I am a big fan of 2-door muscle cars, but where do you go when you need more than the 2-doors for a multipurpose daily driver? The answer is 4-door muscle. Some people are surprised by my love for muscled-up sedans, but I think they fill a needed niche. Nothing is better than a sleeper that can surprise the average tuner. There are not many options nowadays for 4-door muscle, but rest assured, the segment still lives. The only options you have for a new car is the Dodge Charger, Cadillac CTS-V, or Chevy’s SS Sport Sedan. The Chevy SS is another American version of the Holden Commodore. The first version that arrived in the U.S. was the handsome Pontiac G8, which unfortunately only had a 2-year lifespan, thanks to GM closing the Pontiac line. I was a big fan of the G8 GT with the powerful 6.0L V8 capable of 360 horsepower. Thankfully, GM has decided to bring it back with a new face, the Chevy SS.

The Chevy SS has an even more powerful V8 than the 6.0L LS2 from the G8 GT. The SS utilizes the 6.2L LS3 that puts out 415 horsepower and the same amount of torque, which is up quite a bit from the GT’s output. This combo can propel the 2-ton sedan to 60 mph from a stop in just 4.5 seconds and can handle 12.9 in the quarter mile. The SS has everything you could ask for in a muscle car and it is comfortable enough to drive daily. Whenever I have kids, I will not succumb to being the suburban dad miserably driving a minivan. I will go out and buy a 4-door, V8-powered, RWD beast. Currently, it is only available with a 6-speed automatic transmission, but more is on the way. This is the real reason I am talking about the SS. Rumor has it that more is in the oven from GM for this muscle sedan and I cannot wait to see what is being cooked up.

The G8 had a high-performance edition called the GXP. It had the same engine that the SS now has, but at the time it was the performance edition. The most exciting part about the 2015 SS is the possibility of a 6-speed manual option. There is nothing like rowing through the gears with a 400+ horsepower V8 putting power to the rear wheels. I am pretty excited about the possibility of a 6-speed 4-door muscle car. The last gen CTS-V is the only option if you want a third pedal in a 4-door sedan. That may change very soon though. I first heard about this when I was having a debate with a friend about which 4-door muscle car option was best in today’s market. I was convinced that the Charger R/T gave the best bang for your buck, but then I started doing some reading. I may have been being a little close-minded considering that I am a Mopar nut. When he told me that a 6-speed option was coming in Chevy’s new sport sedan, I became very interested. After doing some research; I found that there was not only the potential for a 6-speed option, but also possibly high-performance versions of this already potent sedan.

Nothing has been confirmed, but there has been chatter of a high performance SS similar to the HSX versions in Australia. Chevrolet Performance Cars Marketing Manager John Fitzpatrick has said they are setting much lower sales goals for the Chevrolet SS. If these goals are met, they may take into consideration bringing the 6-speed manual transmission along with more powerful performance versions. In Australia, there are 445 horsepower and 580 horsepower versions of Holden’s Commodore. I hope that at least one of these makes it to our shores. With the possibility of the new Hellcat motor in the Dodge Charger, I think that Chevy needs to up their game and be ready to stop the Charger in its tracks. I am drooling while writing this just imagining a LS7 or LSA hiding under the hood of an unassuming 4-door. Chevy believes that even with a premium price tag, it will not compete with the CTS V-sport. They believe the buyers for each are separate and they may be right. Be on the lookout for a high-performance version of the Chevy SS sedan soon. If the new SS keeps up with Chevy’s recent performance vehicles, it will be a very impressive car.

05/11/2014

Car show season is upon us. Everybody is bringing their rides out of storage and getting ready to show them off every weekend. Most people do not go to the shows simply to let people look at their cars; they do it for the community that you experience while at a show. The best part about a car show is sitting in a lawn chair and talking about your car and the story behind it. I got the opportunity to see some awesome cars and talk to some cool people this weekend. There was everything from completely custom rides to all original restored classics. The annual show at Denison High School is always pretty neat. A lot of the participants have been going to this show for years and know each other from the area. This year was the 25th anniversary of the show put on by Texas Vintage Car Club and it was sponsored by Classic Car Liquidators.
There were a lot of very nice classics at the show, but a certain odd truck stuck out to me. A gray 1979 Dodge Power Wagon was sitting in the shade next to a 1957 Chevy Belair. I recognized the truck from a few months back, when I saw a local builder trailering it to the exhaust shop. I found Don Coley, the owner, sitting on the railing in the back and started talking to him. It turns out that both of these were his first cars, but in two different ways. The ’57 Chevy was the first car that he bought when he got his license. He cruised around in it through high school, but after he got married, he bought his first new vehicle. This, of course, was the 1979 Dodge Power Wagon sitting next to it. The Power Wagon has been through a lot according to Don. He had let his son drive it in high school and he thought it was indestructible and put it through everything that a teenager could. Recently, Don decided he wanted his old truck back, so he sent it to a local restoration expert. Don told me a story about a dilemma he had when he was first buying the truck. He had enough money to either get air conditioning, or the big wheels and tires. Of course as an immature young man, he opted for the big tires. He never thought that he could just get the air conditioning now and easily add new wheels and tires later, but he failed to think it through at the time. It was pretty neat seeing two firsts in Don’s automotive record sitting next to each other.
Another interesting pair that I noticed were two ’56 Ford’s sitting next to one another with a peculiarly similar design. The ’56 F100 and ’56 Victoria built by J & J Customs were definitely two-of-a-kind. The interior on the ’56’s were nearly identical. The ’56 F100 had “Fiffy 6” custom-stitched into the seat and the Victoria had “Fifty 6” in the seat. The burn orange F100 looked classy from a distance, but the more you looked, the more custom you realized it was. The bed was rolled in the corners and it had a roll pan in the front and rear. The rear roll pan had an exhaust cutout that looked like it was there from the factory. The truck was not just extremely customized, but it was done so well that it looked like it possibly could’ve come that way. I did not get a chance to talk to the owner, but the engine bays were clean as a whistle. The F100 had a Roush small block which I’m guessing from the top-notch parts in the rest of the build, is probably Roush’s 427 stroker motor. I do not know about the Victoria either, but it was a Ford racing small-block which I’m guessing was a Ford Racing 347 stroker. I am simply speculating on the engines, but trust me; I will be on the lookout for these vehicles at local shows so that I can find out more about these beautiful custom rides.
Another sweet ride that stuck out from the crowd was a sweet Grabber Blue 1969 Ford Mustang fastback with a modern twist. A few nice Mustangs attended the show and I’ll be honest, I walked by this one without paying attention the first time. When I did another lap around the shop, the hood was up this time. I noticed that there was not another chrome air cleaner shining from under the hood, so I took a closer look. In this 45 year-old vehicle, a supercharged 4.6L V8 out of a 2003 Cobra Mustang was under the hood. It actually looked clean and nearly like it was supposed to be there. I’m sure there is more than just a simple Cobra swap, but unfortunately, I failed to find the owner again. My friend Doug Beam that owns the two-tone ’68 Torino GT knows the owner so I may try to talk to him soon for the details. Look for more about this car soon if I’m able to find out the details.

05/02/2014

For weeks I have been anticipating the New York Auto Show. The 2015 Challenger and Charger would be unveiled by Chrysler. Many people have assumed that this meant that the new SRT Hellcat Challenger would be unveiled, but unfortunately they are keeping us waiting a little longer. No matter the letdown, they still had very big news: both cars have been redesigned a lot. I am not sure how I feel about the Charger’s update, but I think Challenger’s updates are awesome. They both have had a myriad of interior improvements and the automatic cars employ the new Torqueflite 8-speed automatic. The new transmission is iffy to me. For daily driving I am sure it will be fantastic because of the improved gas mileage, but it will be constantly shifting, which may be annoying. We will never really be able to hear the engine rev up because of this. Hard acceleration will be filled with constant gear changes. I am curious to see how it feels in both normal driving and hard driving.

Chrysler claims that not one panel on this car was not touched other than the roof and rear doors. The doors are new, the fenders are new, the front and rear fascia’s are new, but I am concerned the Dart-like front and rear will not be very attractive to buyers. There was a lot going for the Charger with its aggressive look in a normal 4-door sedan, but Dodge has toned it down dramatically with this refresh. It may start to grow on me like the 2015 Mustang has, but that has not happened yet. The headlights are one thing that I really think that they’re a needed upgrade. The LED daytime running lights are starting to become popular with manufacturers and I think they look great. At one point they were reserved strictly for luxury cars, but now they are starting to come on most mid-level cars. The taillights continue with the same idea as before, but they rounded it off and made it look much softer. The styling cues in general have made the car much tamer looking. The car will be offered with 6 new 20” alloy wheel designs and I hope that one of those looks similar to what they had on the car at the show, because they looked fantastic. The 5.7L Hemi will be the most powerful motor offered until the SRT version comes out. I have high hopes that they decide to stick a Hellcat in this family sedan just to keep things interesting.

The Charger has many new features and has been ergonomically updated on the inside. The gauge cluster is a gigantic 7” to provide more information about your gas mileage, miles to empty, time, etc. It will also include their new Performance Pages. These were once only available on SRT vehicles, but now they are available in the mainstream. They’ll do a countdown for you to do a ¼ or 0-60 run and will measure your response time based on their countdown. I think these are pretty cool. Dodge has a video on their website about how they work and what they do that is pretty interesting. You can get anywhere from a 5” touchscreen to an 8.4” unit that takes up most of the center console. When you purchase it, you get a trial to the UConnect system which includes 911 & assistance calls, roadside assistance, theft alert, voice texting, and a Wi-Fi hotspot.

The ’15 Challenger’s changes are a little less drastic, but I think they were much needed as a refresh. Dodge has been trying to emphasize on their past lately. Dodge has tried to give the new Challenger a look similar to the ’71 Challenger with the split grill, but that is all that is very ’71-esque. The rest just emulates the early 70’s Challengers in general. I think the new Challenger looks very similar to a ‘Cuda.. The biggest change is the option of two different Hemi engines in their normal lineup. The SRT is technically part of its own brand. It looks like now they are going to have 4 different engines available in the Challenger. The base model has the 3.6L Penastar V6 which makes nearly 300-hp. For the people who want a little more guts out of their car, you can upgrade to the 5.7L Hemi which puts 375 horsepower and 410 lb-ft of torque. There are two more engines which are the ones the every enthusiast will want to get their hands on.
The engine that used to be saved strictly for use in the SRT Challengers is now available in the mainstream models. The 392 cubic-inch Hemi will be offered in two models, both with a strong connection the lineage of Dodge. The first is the 6.4L S**t Pack edition which has a special bumblebee stripe on the rear which is reminiscent to the S**t Pack cars of the late 60’s. It has the S**t Pack suspension, special decals, startup screen, and more. The 6.4 is pushed up a little bit for this year to 485 horsepower and 475 lb-ft of torque. This is a 15 horsepower and 5 lb-ft of torque upgrade from last year’s 6.4. The other special Challenger with the big Hemi is the 392 Hemi Shaker, which employs the legendary shaker hood in conjunction with the powerful Hemi to have some serious fun. I cannot wait to drive one and watch the shaker hood move with the motor during hard acceleration. I once drove a Mach 1 Mustang with a shaker hood and it was a pretty awesome feeling watching that shaker move when you were on the throttle.

The one that everybody is waiting for is the SRT edition. For a year or two, rumors have been flying around the internet of a supercharged Hemi from Chrysler to show the other domestic companies up. I have been waiting to hear the details for a long time, but Chrysler is not letting any leaks happen. Recently, Car & Driver posted pictures that somebody took of a 2015 Challenger with a special hood scoop, wheels, fascia, etc. behind a fence and it looked like it could have very possibly been a Hellcat. A friend of mine that lives near Ontario, where the Challenger is built, said that his buddy is a manager at the plant and they have already produced 20 or so supercharged Challengers, but unfortunately they were not allowed to know all of the exact specs at his level. In a recent interview with Hot Rod Magazine, Ralph Gilles said, "We have a situation where, you know -- we may have a situation -- where the flagship car is not the most powerful car in our arsenal...how do we explain that to ourselves? So we have an internal horsepower race as well as an external one.” This gives the impression that the Hellcat could surpass the 640 horsepower that the Viper’s V10 produces. I would enjoy if they surpassed the 650 horsepower that the Shelby GT500 produced just for the bragging rights. I am curious to see the actual output, but my guess is that it will be around 600 horsepower, we will have to wait and see.

04/25/2014

Last year at the GoodGuys Lone Star Nationals in the fall, I saw a car that stood out to me. It was Bryan Cope’s 1971 Pontiac Firebird in Lucerne Blue. It was parked by all of the cars waiting in line for the autocross. The hood was closed, windows up, and Bryan was nowhere in sight. At the time, I thought it was just a good looking car. This year at the spring show, I saw the car again, but this time at the hotel we were staying at on the night before the show. Luckily, Bryan was in his car so I came over to say Hi. I ended up talking to him for a little while about his car and then he popped the hood for me. I was in for a surprise when I spotted a LS hiding under there. After talking to Bryan a little bit I was pretty impressed with the car. The next day, I had a chance to see watch the autocross. I watched all of the pro cars run and then I saw that blue Firebird fly from the starting line and I knew there had to be more to the story on this car.

Originally, Bryan started out building a pro-touring, LS-powered Firebird in late 2010. He had a few bumps along the way, and ended up selling the car he originally planned to build. About a year later when he picked the conviction of the build back up, he found another car to build. It had been restored in the 90s and it was still in pretty good condition. He had always wanted his car to be red, but he settled with the blue. Personally, I think the blue looks much sleeker. Bryan has been working on it since then, with it moving from shop to shop. Eventually he got his car on the road and driving. Then he decided to start using his car for what he built it for; autocross.

LS power is all the rage nowadays because of their reliability, durability, higher peak power possibilities, their easiness of tuning, and much more. Bryan decided to go with a crate 402ci LS2 from Golen High Performance Engines. It’s based on a LS2, but it has a custom camshaft, ported L92 heads, FTP 4-barrel 1,350cfm throttle body, F.A.S.T. XFI controller & harness, and much more. From the dyno runs they sent him, the engine pushes over 600 horsepower and 550 lb-ft of torque. That is plenty of power to get the car around the track very quickly. I cannot imagine how much fun it’d be to show up a modern muscle car on the street. He hooked the engine to a T-56 Magnum 6-speed transmission. For a car that he wants to be able to drive wherever he wants, whenever he wants and still thrash is around the track occasionally, the drive train is ideal.

This car was not built to be a straight-line car only. Bryan wanted it to corner with the best. He decided to go with one of the experts in second-gen Camaro suspension, Jake’s Rod Shop. JRS built him an entire custom front subframe with custom control arms, monoball control arm bushings, and much more based on the C6 Corvette’s suspension. In the rear, he went with JRS’s Torque Arm setup with their Watt’s Link and a 9” rearend with 3.89 gears and a True-Trac differential. He has Bilstein single-adjustable coilovers all around that make this car sit absolutely perfect. JRS also built him a full 4-point rollcage to keep the car stiff and safe during hard cornering. Bryan did not short out whatsoever on the braking system either. He used Detroit Speed’s master cylinder and power brake booster to help the big Baer brakes stop. There are 14” rotors with six-piston calipers all around. From the looks of how it handled on the track, this ride stops very well.

My favorite part about cars like this is the look. The Lucerne Blue paint and the old school white stripe down the center make it look classic, but the stance and wheel and tire setup give it a modern flare as well. The custom suspension setup and the big brakes call for custom offsets and pretty much a custom wheel. Bryan decided to go with Forgeline for his wheels because they custom make each wheel to your specifications. He went with their GA3 wheels with the satin gunmetal centers and polished outers. I think they are absolutely the perfect wheel choice for this car. He did a lot of measuring to see exactly what size wheel and tire he could fit. He ended up managing to fit 18”x10” wheels in front with 275/40/18 in front and 18”x11.5” with 315/40/18’s in the rear. Originally he was debating whether to use Michelin PS2’s or BFG KDW’s, but now he says he is running Falken’s all around, but he didn’t tell me which of their tires he is running.

Bryan has incorporated a lot of quality products into his car and I think his setup is one of my favorites I have seen so far. The look of the car is just right with not too much in-your-face styling, but not too traditional either. He not only built this to be a track car, but to be a cruiser as well. He even installed a Vintage Air Gen IV A/C system from Prodigy Customs into it for those hot Texas days. One of my favorite parts is how he worked to make the Trans Am hood scoop work with the LS motor. Bryan said he spent a lot of time trying to make the scoop fit and work correctly and I think the effort was well worth it. F-body cars may be abundant in the pro-touring scene, but this one has something special about it. I am sure that I will see Bryan again at the fall Lone Star Nationals in Dallas this year and I can’t wait to see what he’s upgraded next. Cars like this are a never ending project, but that is why we love them.