BadNick

I've been very interested in cars since I was about 7yo and I was 18yo in 1967 ...so as you might guess, I grew up loving muscle cars of all sorts. I grew up often hanging around garages with car guys, a group of them had hot rods of all sorts, as in '32, '34, '40 Fords etc. Of the muscle cars, Fords were always my least favorite but there are plenty of Fords I'd enjoy owning now. I'd say most of my youth I leaned heavily toward Mopars with Chevy's a close second. Among my immediate friends and their big brothers who owned muscle cars, it seemed that Fords never quite performed up to Chrysler and Chevy products. Of course there are exceptions, a local guy that showed up one day with his brand new Boss 429 Mustang left a strong impression. One of the guys had an early '60's Dodge 413 Wedge in a big coupe, forgot the exact model, but it was very quick. My best friend owned a '68 440 Magnum Charger, another good friend had a 440 GTX, another had a 383 RoadRunner, the Ford guy had a '60 406ci Galaxie with trips and some other work ...beautiful car but couldn't run with the fastest; he sold it and got (not sure the model year) I think a '68 390 Fairlane GT, moded it, nice but couldn't hang with the fast guys. Another buddy had an LT1 Vette, the guy with the 440 GTX sold it and got a 427 Vette. Thru all this, I eventually bought a '67 XKE so that gives you a hint where my head was at; I loved that car since the first time I saw a picture of it when they came out in '61 and told myself I'd own one someday; so I bought myself the '67 Roadster a few months after graduating from college.

All around performance was something I always wanted and I always followed sports car racing, F1, CanAm, TransAm etc so I wanted something that would do more than go fast in a straight line and can barely stop at the end ...even though that is a crude oversimplification of typical muscle cars. A 427 Cobra was more like my idea of an ideal muscle car; moded Vettes also appealed to me but I didn't like all the typical rattles in older Vettes ...the new ones seem much better built.

Since one of my close friends built a car for drag racing, a little gasser HenryJ running in H or G/Gas, and of course the other guys also drag raced regularly at local strips, during much of my late teens/early twenties we went to the local drag strips more than once a week. I still love drag racing too.

Now I own a '95 Toyota Supra, still with stock twin turbos but I run as much boost as I can get away with ...dyno'd 435rwhp/455rwtq so it's no slouch; it has moded suspension with fully adjustable coilovers so I can set it up like I want. I consider it something of a Japanese engineered modern muscle car. It accelerates like crazy, stops better than most cars ever made, pulls very high g's cornering. I road race it pretty regularly, not hard core wheel to wheel road racing, just those HPDE events at local road courses like Pocono and Watkins Glen.

I'm pretty sure when my two boys, 9 and 10yo, get a bit older, we'll end up building a hot rod of some sort and to stay within my budget, a spruced up version of some rat rods I've seen appeal to me.