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• The Top 10 Pre-GTO American Muscle Cars

  In Classics / By Tom Anderson / 19 March 2012

  

  An overwhelming majority of sources assert that the Adam of the American muscle car species is the 1964 Pontiac GTO. It was certainly the first muscle car to be marketed toward leadfooted baby boomers, but it was not the first high-performance American passenger car. Nor was it the first American car to combine one of its maker’s big car engines with one of its small car body and chassis.

  In short, the history of the muscle car stretches back many years before the O.G. Goat showed up. Just how rich is that history? Take a look at the following 10 factory hot rods and we think you’ll agree it’s pretty doggone rich.

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• Great Moments in Crappy Engine History: Volkswagen Wasserboxer [w/ Video]

  In Classics / By Tom Anderson / 12 March 2012

  

  The German auto industry has earned a reputation for constructing vehicles of unmatched quality and precision. From the cheapest Volkswagen to the priciest Maybach, cars from the Fatherland generally feel rock solid and, when properly maintained, offer thousands of miles of headache-free service. Why do we use the qualifier “generally?” Well, just like not all French cars are weird and not all American cars are useless when the pavement gets squiggly, not every Auto out of Deutschland has been endowed with impeccable reliability.

  Take, for example, the Volkswagen Type 2 T3, better known to inhabitants of this continent as the Vanagon. Like the two generations of VeeDub van (and pickup, we might add) that preceded it, the Vanagon was born with an air-cooled flat-four hanging out over the rear axle. That engine provided dependable (if not rapid) locomotion for the first couple years of the T3’s life (1979-1982). However, tighter emissions standards for 1983 onwards would prove too tight for the air-cooled engines, so the VW engineering staff set to work on a water-cooled replacement to take its place in the T3 (and only the T3; the company’s remaining air-cooled passenger cars would remain as such until their production runs ended). What they came up with was the Wasserboxer (Wasser being German for water). This is its story.

  

  Like its air-cooled predecessors, the Wasserboxer was offered in multiple displacements (initially 1.9L, later joined by a 2.1L variant) and featured two pushrod-actuated valves per cylinder. Another tradition the Wasserboxer kept alive was the lack of a timing chain or belt; the camshaft was gear-driven directly off the crankshaft. When cared for, none of this stuff caused any widespread issues. Venture into the cylinder bores, however, and you find the engine’s major Achilles heels.

  Rather than placing conventional flat gaskets between the block and cylinder heads, VW engineers instead used rubber lip style gaskets to prevent leakage where the parts joined together. What’s more, the cast iron cylinder liners stuck out beyond the decks of the aluminum block; the protruding liners then slid into recesses in the heads, and the tops of the cylinders were then sealed off with compressible metal rings. The actual combustion chambers were bowls in the tops of the pistons instead of recesses in the cylinder head; these are known as Heron type combustion chambers. Finally, the casting around the cylinder liners was mostly empty space, creating a water jacket (or one big coolant passage) around them.

  

  If you said having combustion chambers essentially surrounded by water with multiple potential failure points sounds like a recipe for trouble, give yourself a cookie, because that was precisely the case. Not only could coolant leak out through breaches in the unorthodox head gaskets and cause overheating, but it could also slip past the compression rings and into the combustion chamber. This second, more disastrous scenario would cause anything from corrosion and misfires resulting from a little coolant leaking in to hydrolock, a phenomenon in which a non-compressible liquid (i.e. water) pushes back with tremendous force against its surroundings as it is given less and less space to occupy, when the cylinder is partially or fully flooded. The most common damage resulting from hydrolock is bent or broken connecting rods, though busted cranks, warped cylinder heads and cracked or holed blocks have also been known to occur in Wasserboxers. Early Wasserboxers were particularly susceptible to failed compression rings, as the use of coolant containing phosphate accelerated their corrosion. VW later filled engines with and recommended owners refill their engines with phosphate-free coolant, prolonging the rings’ lives significantly (though not completely doing away with the problem).

  Other common causes of Wasserboxer death include poorly positioned sensors that didn’t let you know something was amiss until it was too late, and corrosion in the cooling system. Regardless of the cause, many of these T3-exclusive mills met untimely ends, leading to hundreds of irate customers and all sorts of warranty claim woes for Wolfsburg. Small wonder, then, that the vehicle that replaced the T3, the T4 (a.k.a. Eurovan) featured a far more conventional front-engine, front-drive layout and vertically-oriented inline engines. South Africa, however, would stay with the T3 until 2002, and from 1993 until then, it was equipped with VW and Audi inline-fours and inline-fives. The Wasserboxer would be VW’s first and last liquid-cooled pancake engine, and the last new horizontally-opposed engine it would introduce. The company’s last boxer engines (which were also its last air-cooled engines) were 1.6L units fitted to 200 special edition 2006 Brazilian T2 vans. (Water-cooled T2s are still being made in Brazil, some 45 years after VW’s second generation van was introduced!)

  

  Maybe someday, VW will build another production vehicle powered by a boxer engine. With kissing cousin Porsche rumored to be developing a flat-four, it wouldn’t surprise us. We just hope they stick with what works instead of wandering too far off the reservation. That would work out better for everyone. 

   

• The Fast & The Forbidden: 1984-’94 Peugeot 205 GTI

  In Classics / By Tom Anderson / 12 October 2011

  

  As the 1970s were drawing to a close, the traditional formula for a small European sports car (two seats, rear-wheel-drive and a fold-down roof) was being replaced by a new formula: The hot hatch. The first modern hot hatch (We’re excluding the O.G. Mini Cooper, since it had a funky bottom-hinged trunklid rather than a hatch.) to really gain traction in the marketplace was the Volkswagen Golf GTI, which took Europe by storm upon its introduction in 1976 and won a huge following over here beginning in 1983 as the Pennsylvania-built Rabbit GTI.

  Naturally, VW’s success did not go unnoticed by the competition; by the early ‘80s there was a bumper crop of diabolical 3-doors being peddled by manufacturers from Europe and Japan. Sadly, not all of them followed in the ur-GTI’s wheeltracks and made it to the U.S. One of the ones we really wish had gotten its Green Card shared part of its name with that of the category’s originator. We speak, of course, of the Peugeot 205 GTI.

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• Sub5Zero Fantasy Collection: Monteverdi Hai 450 SS

  In Classics / By Tom Anderson / 17 September 2011

  

  It seems like in the 1960s and early ‘70s, you couldn’t have swung a dead cat-shaped bong without hitting a limited-production American V8-powered European exotic. Certainly the Ford-powered DeTomaso Pantera and Mangusta are pretty well known, and many car cognoscenti are familiar with Bizzarrini’s voluptuous, Chevy Small Block-motivated 5300GT Strada.

  But what about fans of Mopar powertrains? Sure, the lovely Facel Vegas featured Chrysler mills, but they fall much closer to the relaxed grand tourer end of the spectrum than they do the raucous sports car end. No, we’re looking for something that has the engine in the middle, a wedgey shape and a devil-may-care attitude. Something like…the 1970 Monteverdi Hai 450 SS.

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• Internet Gem of the Week: 1973 Porsche 911 Carrera 2.7 RS

  In Classics / By Tom Anderson / 10 September 2011

  

  Sometimes (okay, most of the time), life isn’t fair. Bad things happen to good people (and vice versa), good people are forced to pay the price for the transgressions of bad people, and we Americans have been forced to admire hundreds of awesome European, Japanese and Australian performance cars from afar, while they’re forced to admire(?) our full-size trucks and SUVs from afar. And if that wasn’t bad enough, many foreign lands let gearheads import vehicles not officially sold there after doing little more than paying some taxes and filling out some forms. But if you, Joe America, attempt to bring in something like, say, a Peugeot RCZ or a Ford Falcon XR6 Ute, U.S. Customs officials will force you to watch them destroy it before they ship your ass to a jointly-run NHTSA/EPA reeducation camp. (Okay, that might be a slight – and we do mean slight – exaggeration.)

  However, vehicles 25 years or older are fair game (unless your local smog laws require testing on vehicles outside that age range). That explains why the Swabian beauty you see before you is presently sitting in Connecticut, looking for a new master. But what’s so special about this Porsche? Read on.

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• Generation Gap: Jaguar XJR-S vs. Jaguar XKR-S

  In Classics / By Tom Anderson / 23 August 2011

  

  When most car geeks hear “Jaguar” and “sports car” in the same sentence, the immortal E-Type (or XK-E as it was known Stateside) is the most likely machine to pop into their heads. They might also think of the exotic XJ220, the company’s first postwar series of sports cars (the XK120/140/150), or any of the prewar S.S. models. But anything post-E-Type? They’re usually dismissed as heavy, softly sprung grand tourers.

  But that’s not necessarily true, especially now with the arrival of the 2012 XKR-S. But this angrier alloy animal isn’t the first caliente version of one of Conventry’s GTs. In the early ‘90s, Jag offered a limited edition hardcore(-ish) version of the long-serving XJS (known as the XJ-S prior to 1993) dubbed the XJR-S. Is it any match for the brand’s new killer kitten? Let’s break it down.

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• Internet Gem of the Week: 1973 Citroen SM

  In Classics, Featured / By Tom Anderson / 17 July 2011

  

  Over the years there have been scores of automobiles born from two companies. The raison d’etre for such motoring mutts varies on a case-by-case basis; some are the product of a desire to save development and/or manufacturing costs, while others are created to capitalize on synergies (be they real or imagined) between the two marques. And a few just exist to cash in on the glittering reputation of one of the partners.

  So into which category does the Citroen SM fall? Well it was partly about sprinkling some of Maserati’s prestige on Citroen, but the fact that Citroen owned Maserati at the time also factored into it. So what would you get if you bought this Franco-Italian lady in red up for grabs on eBay? Read on.

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• 2011 Barrett-Jackson Auction Roars Through Orange County for 2nd Annual Showing

  In Car Events, Classics / By Tom Anderson / 27 June 2011

  

  It seems so obvious, but when you get down to it, cars are appliances, tools for getting from one point in the time-space continuum to another. But cars aren’t like other everyday machines; for starters, there aren’t scores of magazines published worldwide dedicated to toasters, nor has there ever been a single Internet forum flame war fought between LG and Maytag fanboys (and because you read that on the Internet, you know it’s true).

  But the biggest bellwether of how special automobiles are relative to most of mankind’s other creations is the recent (as in the last decade or so) surge in popularity of classic and special interest car auctions. One of the auction companies that has been leading that charge is Arizona-based Barrett-Jackson, now in its 40th year of operation. What makes these events so enticing? Consider all that was going on at the auction they held this past weekend at the OC Fair and Event Center in our sunny old stomping grounds of Costa Mesa, California.

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• Internet Gem of the Week: 1999 Rolls-Royce Silver Seraph

  In Classics / By Tom Anderson / 3 June 2011

  

  The Internet has done many things to change the world, from putting seemingly limitless quantities of information at our fingertips, to taking video chat from science fiction to science fact, to making funny pictures of cats with poorly spelled captions touchstones of Western culture, to broadening the horizons of commerce. That last one is especially good for car enthusiasts, who are no longer limited to the likes of their local paper’s classifieds or the Recycler when shopping for a car.

  We definitely harbor an appreciation for the vast dealership that is the World Wide Web, and we want to spread the gospel. How? By showing you folks what sort of awesome finds are out there waiting on sites like eBay Motors and Craigslist nationwide, of course. So to kick off this series, it would be fitting to start with something special right. And this is a special car that was built for special (and wealthy) people.

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• How It’s Done: New Body, Old Frame

  In Classics, Performance / By Aaron Richardson / 22 January 2011

  

  We like this. We used to hate the idea of putting a new body on an old frame and calling it a “hot rod.” It didn’t seem right. That was when buying a new body meant buying something that came out of a mold and was made of a substance not known to man when the original ’32 Fords were rolling off the assembly line. It also meant it was highly likely that a modern frame with air bag suspension and a 350/350 combo would be powering the “Deuce” at 5 mph around fair grounds and up the ramps to the trailer that got it there.

  These days, buying a new Deuce body doesn’t necessarily mean a horrible Chip Foose-style custom is next. Nowadays you can buy an all-steel body that looks like it may as well have been built by Henry Ford himself. The best part? It’s guaranteed to only need paint. No rust repair, no straightening, no chopping. Simple, effective, stylish. The downside? They ain’t what you’d call cheap. That said, hot rodding is the wrong hobby to have if you’re trying to save money.

  

  There’s a beautiful example of how well this philosophy works over on the HAMB, where member Brian Bass has been assembling just such a ride. He bought a custom steel body, and stuck it atop a homemade frame with factory ’32 Model A cross members. The running gear is a ’41 Ford rear end and a ’39 Ford transmission, hooked to a 1957 Chevrolet 283 with a three-deuce intake. Add a set of lake pipes and hand-built tubular headers to the mix, and you have a perfect, period-correct hot rod. 

  

  Though building a rod like this can’t be cheap, it’s still a damn sight cheaper, and less maddening, than buying an original 1932 Ford Roadster that was hot rodded back in the day. Sure, it may not have quite the provenance of an original, but it’s at least as much fun.