"I often buy cars when my wife is out of town." If you were to ask any married man about that quote from Scott Miller, he would tell you that it sounds like a recipe for disaster. But Scott says he’s been able to make it work. For example, in 1998, he had been looking for a new car while his wife was away on vacation. And like any savvy wife, she probably anticipated what was about to happen. True to form, Scott bought a brand-new Camaro, then called his wife to deliver the news. (Hint to all single guys: Bad news is often better delivered over the phone.) When wife Shannon learned of the acquisition, her response was, "Too bad—you could've had the BMW!" But she was just yanking Scott’s chain. The couple has made the most out of that Camaro for the last 13 years. In the intervening time, Scott has slowly been assembling a quick summer machine that he takes to Brainerd International, where his best pass is an 11.63 at 118 mph. That’s impressive for a mildly warmed-over LS1. There’s no huge cubic-inch stroker here, just a stock short-block 5.7L with a cam, heads, and some intake work. Even more surprising is that the 4L60E is also stock, fitted only with a Yank 10-inch converter. Scott takes great pride in driving the Camaro 80 miles each way to the track, with the slicks and the jack stuffed in the back. While this might be a late-model cruiser with tons of amenities, some things never change.

"They all thought I was nuts," Steve Nitti tells us as we marvel at his sick creation. "I bought it new on January 3, 1972, at 2:32 p.m. for $2,200." Yes, he knows the time of day he bought the car. That fact is also verified by the builder, who could recite that phrase off the top of his head too, even though he'd finished working on the car nearly a year before.

“Driving the Road Runner is like a moment of Zen,” says Dan Weishaar of his ’68 Road Runner.

Hank Groves / Woodstock, IL

Man, these cars are what it’s all about. Bitchin’, handmade, single- and twin-turbo systems stuffed into big, steel-door cars that absolutely crush everything else on the road: small-blocks and big-blocks, turbonetics, eBay turbos, Precision, and huge CT billet jobs pounding out 800 and 900 hp at the rear wheels. These cars aren’t trailer fluff. No gutted sheetmetal interiors here. Bench seats, carpet, tunes, and gears for the highway are the rule, and most of them run all day on pump juice. It’s not just about the Chevy—there’s a 700hp, small-block Mustang and even a Pontiac in the group. These are legit, 9-second street machines that see hours of freeway and street time and didn’t take a zillion dollars to build.

Don Garlits
Ocala, FL

Unlike most vehicles featured in CC, this thing is pretty much stock. However, adding the word “super” in front of “stock” makes a huge impact on Mopar guys, so we couldn’t resist. It’s a stripped down ’64 Dodge 330 sedan, fit with a 426 Max Wedge engine, so there’s a lot to love about this bright-red Mopar. Rick Lewis bought the car partially complete a few years ago and went to great lengths to finish it and give it the right amount of period-correct flair.

Back in the day, the Hollywood muscle cars like the Z/28 Camaros, the Boss 302 Fords, the GTOs, and the big-block Road Runners were the cars people wanted. At least, almost everybody wanted them. During those same years, there were those pedestrian cars that were universally ignored, again by almost everyone. When Tim McCurdy returned from serving in the Navy during the early years of Vietnam, a magazine story caught his attention. “I saw an article in the December issue of Hot Rod on an L-72 427 swap into a plain-Jane ’65 Chevelle 300. I never forgot that article or the car, and I knew one day I would have to find a 300 to restore and put a big-block into. When I retired in 2003, I began my search for a ’65 300, but all I could find was used rust buckets. Finally, in 2008 I found this 300 that had a high-quality frame-off completed in 2006. I couldn’t resist buying it. The guy who did the frame-off was a perfectionist, which suited me perfectly, as I have no tolerance for substandard workmanship,” Tim recalls.

Don’t call it a gasser. It’s B/FX. The altered wheelbase, the straight axle, and the lettering all point to what was the original mold for the Funny Car in 1964. Fords were under orders to avoid racing against the big-block–powered, altered-wheelbase A/FX Chryslers and went underground with a small-block effort until 1965, when the first SOHC altered-wheelbase Comet appeared with the rear wheels moved forward 10 inches. Dale’s is a version of a small-block, altered-wheelbase class or B/FX car from that era. The bucket seats, the steering wheel, the Ford 9-inch from an early Galaxie instead of a remanufactured one, the Cragars, the real gold leaf in the lettering instead of vinyl, and the hand-lettered characters are all there for a reason. If it says A/FX and has a small-block, or A/G and has an altered wheelbase, it’s not right. Dale made sure his car is a close as possible to what might have been.

If you follow Fastest Street Car racing—or even if you don’t—chances are you know the name Mike Moran. We could fill these two pages with a list (in very small type) of Mike’s Fastest Street Car and drag racing accomplishments, but for this section, we thought you might like to get a peek at what’s inside Mike’s current shop. In the beginning, Mike raced out of his two-car garage and worked full time for the airlines. When we first met him in Memphis in 1992, he was wheeling a small-block, nitrous-assisted, Cleveland-headed 8.80/152-mph Pinto station wagon that was the embodiment of the ultimate sleeper. Through the subsequent years, Mike has helped pioneer the brutally fast, turbocharged Fastest Street Car element, with that technology now bleeding over into the fastest door-slammers in the country. Along the way, Mike has been working on developing a new set of very impressive, high-flow electronic fuel injectors that are rated up to 600 lb/hr. But we’ll save that for another story. We had Mike give us a quick, guided tour of his shop. But don’t get too comfortable with this, because he tells us he’s already found an even larger shop to accommodate his growing engine-building, car-tuning, and fuel-injector business.

Check out Adam's shop online at SpankinTime.com

"It pulls like a freight train. If the tires are warm it will hook, otherwise it will haze them and you'll need both hands on the wheel," says Steve Dahlmeyer of his '70 Chevelle. How did Steve get into a big-red hot rod in the first place? It was a teamwork deal.

John Wolf is your classic Mopar true believer. Originally from Long Island, New York, he moved to Arizona several years ago with his entourage of cars to a town that is a way station along old Route 66. Kingman is very much a car town, but as John says, "Now all we need is a dragstrip and a road course." The '70 Coronet R/T project began back in New York after John purchased the coupe from his friend Tony D'Agostino of Tony's Parts in Delaware. "The car was very rough-no driveline, brick-sized holes where metal is supposed to be-but the frame was solid and straight. I had access to a one-car garage that had no electricity, heat, or A/C. I bought the car in November and it was a couple of really cold months of disassembling that car at night using rechargeable work lights, handtools, and lots of hot chocolate," John says. He finished the sheetmetal, interior, and paint in time to take a new job in Arizona. "After 20 years of working on cars in a rental garage with no light, I finally have a place where I can really get busy." Some people build castles to crown their kingdoms, but car guys build a big shop where they can do their best work. Send us a photo of yours and maybe you'll end up in This Guy's Garage.

When the '05 S197 Mustang arrived, it appeared on every 8x10 square piece of advertisement short of a Wheaties box. It looked right, sounded right, and seemed like the ultimate solution to the weird-ish New Edge SN-95s that preceded it. Then, ouch, the 4.6 3V only made 300 hp and 330 lb-ft, and the convertible version weighed around 3,600 pounds. The car had everything but speed.

Gary Richard has been running Stock and Super Stock for 53 years. He owned West Hampton raceway in West Hampton, Long Island, and raced Pontiacs and Chevys in the '60s before dropping off the scene. In 2004, he was back into it with a Stock Eliminator '69 Camaro, and eventually he got into Cobra Jets.

God only knows how fast we were going, but we were flying. From my vantage point in the passenger seat, I could not see the speedometer, and Editor Glad was busy scanning a path through traffic on the congested 405 freeway. What neither of us missed was the unmistakable black and white roof of a California Highway Patrol Crown Victoria. We were in the left lane on the southbound side as he was approaching on the northbound side. Our ’12 Boss 302 Mustang must have seemed like a Competition Orange blur rocketing past, and the monolithic concrete divider was the only thing between us and massive points on Doug’s driving record, because it was impossible for him to make a U-turn and come after us. “He flipped his lights on, did you see that?” Doug asked later. Apparently motivated by either frustration or outrage, the Chippie had fired up his light bar for a few seconds as if to say, “I saw that. I can’t come after you, but I saw you speeding.”

Anything is possible if you are willing to work hard. Eric Solomon's '78 Malibu sets an example for the rest of us. He was able to assemble this car using wit and knowledge in place of wallet prowess. The result is his daily-driven street machine that runs 11s for around 4 large.

Vega-Nomics
Jeff Schwartz was looking for a smaller car to build when he ran across this Vega with only 44,000 miles on the clock and surprisingly little rust for a Midwest car. The original plan was to stuff a budget '90s LT1 under the hood, but then he ran across a super deal on an aluminum-block 5.3L LS out of a Buick Rainier SUV, to which he added an eBay-scored LS1 intake and a stock LS7 camshaft because he had one lying around. Jeff owns Schwartz Performance and decided the Vega could be a great little autocrosser with some tweaks that included a '99 S10 truck disc brake 3.42:1-geared rear axle assembly-blessed with a TruTrac limited slip. Jeff said they also made the effort to complete the factory stitch-welding, which considerably stiffens this little subcompact. He added a TH350 trans tweaked by his pal Ralph Babineau, and the drivetrain was set. Jeff added a Flaming River fast-ratio steering box, a larger Addco front sway bar, and QA1 shocks all the way around to massage the handling on a car not known for its corner-carving prowess. The final touch was a set of Superlite wheels and BFGoodrich tires. While there is some fabrication work on the Vega, courtesy of Schwartz Performance, there's nothing here that is beyond the realm of a competent car crafter. It's the perfect budget supercar, and it performed well at several Pro Touring events last summer, including CC's own Real Street Eliminator, where Jeff finished Second, and Holley's LS Fest, where the Vega racked up an impressive Third Place finish in the autocross against some super-high-dollar Pro Touring cars. While we don't have a complete rundown of all the parts and investments on the Vega, it's clear that using Jeff's Vega as a template, you could come up with your own Ten-G sportster.

SN-95 Mustang
OK, you knew an SN-95 Mustang was going to be part of this list, but instead of the obvious Fox-body models ('79 to '93), we are going to recommend building an early SN-95 car, specifically one of the '96 to '98 models with the 4.6L engine. When introduced, that curvy sheetmetal was polarizing, even repulsive in the eyes of a few of us here. However, that quality can be advantageous now to buyers looking for a newer car to build. Because they are less desirable than the later New Edge SN-95s ('99 to '04), they sell for less. The other piece of good news is that this body style just needs a couple of things to completely transform the car from ugly duckling to badass street machine: 1) lowering the springs, and 2) installing the widest wheel and tire combination you can fit in the wheelwells.

"It's just a good, old fashioned, father-and-son build," Tyler Witt, a police officer by trade, casually tells us about his eBay score. Tyler and his father bought this '86 Camaro on eBay in fall 2004 for the paltry sum of $2,001. Clay Witt, Tyler's father, adds, "We were really surprised that the seller was spot-on when he said it was a clean car."

Mark Stielow
Detroit, MI
Many enthusiasts believe Mark Stielow must be independently wealthy with a big shop and a personal valet who does nothing but write checks for the phalanx of cars that Mark has owned over the last 20 years. Nothing could be further from the truth. What is true is Mark works out of this three-car garage behind his house in a Detroit suburb. He doesn't really live in his house, he just visits there when it's time to sleep. Every other waking moment not spent at his full-time job as a GM engineer is spent here working on his next new automotive adventure. Yes, almost all of Mark's cars have been Camaros. Get over it. Yes, he's an excellent car builder who does most of the work himself. And no, he's not wealthy. That's why he has been forced to sell each Camaro once it's completed just to pay off the massive credit card bill. So why does he do it? Because he's one of those rare, driven individuals who aren't satisfied with last month's accomplishments. There's always a better idea lurking around in his head, and these thoughts eventually materialize into corner-blitzing, Pro Touring machines. In fact, Mark is the man who coined the term, so he knows a little about these kinds of cars. He revealed a portion of that intensity at the '10 Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational, where he out-drove the field to win the overall title. Let's take a tour of Mark's humble garage.

When set on building a 10-second street car, most of us don't even consider messing with a straight-six. Meet Mike Robinson; he's not most of us. One day the Easthampton, Massachusetts, native yanked a healthy (vital signs, that is) 300-inch six-banger from a rusty 110,000-mile '84 Ford F-150 pickup and decided to go drag racing. Mike knows that the Ford 300 (like most straight-sixes, regardless of make) uses a 120-degree crank design. That means the crank rotates a full 120 degrees between cylinder firing impulses. By contrast, most typical V8 engines send a piston down the hole every 90 degrees. On the negative side, that means the six's crank must rotate a full 120 degrees before there is another power stroke. But on the positive side, each power stroke has 30 degrees of extra time to put energy (i.e., torque) into the crankshaft. That's why straight-sixes generally deliver more low-end torque than comparably sized V8s—all other factors being equal.

Despite the heavily blinged-out '69 Camaros parked in a tidy row at Pro Touring events, you don't have to spend a gazillion dollars to build a track car. With the right combo of parts, you can do it for less.

While some readers may breathe a sigh of relief upon seeing this headline, the non-Chevy reference is not an intentional, self-deprecating jab at our Chevy Craft reputation. Instead, it is paraphrased from a quote from Bruce Aherns, owner of this great-looking Mercury. "After building Chevys, this car was a challenge. It is a lot easier to find parts for Chevys."

Mike and Corena Molgard
Loveland, Colorado
For some guys, busting knuckles on old muscle cars was something you did as a kid, eventually lost like the intensity and passion of youth. For other guys like Mike Molgard, working on new project cars in his shop has become a lifelong obsession. As an over-the-road trucker, Mike spends too much time away from shop and home. Time spent immersed in his machines is precious, so it might as well be enjoyable, too. The problem (if you can call it that) is that there is an ever-growing list of machines clamoring for attention. It's clear Mike's been at this a long time since CC can trace our connection to him all the way back to a feature on his '64 Lightweight Galaxie in our July '83 issue. Since then, Mike and his wife, Corena, have expanded their vehicular adventures with Mopars, Fords, Chevys, and even street rods. The Molgards aren't particularly brand loyal. The car just has to be cool.