Best of Hot Rod Magazine, Chrysler Muscle Cars:
Hot Rod Technical Library Vol. 8
All self respecting gearheads have a ton of car magazines around the house. They are great for idle time and for reference. Vintage mags from back when your favorite car was on the showroom floor are invaluable sources for their feature stories that are chock full of photos of unmolested cars and engine bays. The trouble is when ya really need to find something pertinent it can be a real chore thumbing through tons of magazines to find what you need.
Back in the mid nineties “Car Tech” publishers teamed up with Hot Rod magazine and compiled articles into a “best of” series. I picked up the “Best of Hot Rod Magazine, Chrysler Muscle Cars: Hot Rod Technical Library Vol. 8” a few years ago at Gotellis Speed Shop down in South San Francisco. To get all these great articles from Hot Rod and Car Craft would take years of swap meet miles so to have them all in one place is totally cool.
The writing throughout is good and of special note are the technical sections written by Mopar nut Al Kirschenbaum. Al and his brother Steve were heavy street racers in the sixties and Mopars were their weapon of choice. Al’s A-body compendium is worth the purchase price for its in-depth look at the A-body performance scene and history. Other notables include David Featherston and the late Gray Baskerville writing about winged Mopars.
Of all the features in this book my favorite has to be the road tests and especially the ones where they would hand the car over to a car club and let them have at it. The best of them all has to be the feature on the little known D/Dart. The D/Dart was a ’65 Dart GT with a 273 that had received the full on hop-up via items available at the dealership. Part of the package included full length under chassis headers by Doug Thorley that look pretty outrageous. Does anyone have a car with this package still in it today? As an A-body freak I wish I had one.
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At least I’ve got the book. I don’t think Car Tech is publishing this number anymore but you can find it online from various sources, even PDF versions. I simply googled “best of hot rod Chrysler muscle cars” and got tons of hits. Good luck, it’s worth it.
