Which car would you choose?

treitz3

Let's have a little bit of fun....I know there are many car fanatics on Club Polk, so I figured this would be an interesting poll to see which one of these vehicles most people would choose.

You can only choose one.

Let's say that in an alternate universe, your Dad had all three cars. You are one of three sons and the two other cars, your brothers or sisters get.....but you get the first choice because you were the first born.

Which one would you choose?

boston1450

GTO

My first car was a 1969 Pontiac Gran Prix & then my mom's Demon. I love Pontiacs. I can only dream of having one now & a 4 door older model Chevelle
Sexy Wheels

tonyp063

Charger

The Charger for me.
I've always been a fan of Mostly Old Parts And Rust.

nooshinjohn

GTO

Option 4... trade all three for one of these. If Dad was cool enough to own all three of those, the Yugo must have been abandoned long before he bought the place.



The Car above is a 1965 Riviera Gran Sport, fully optioned and painted in Salmon Bronze Mist, which was a Cadillac only color that year. It is a factory painted car as a special order, and thus a 1 of 1.

msg

GTO

way to go, John. rules are for suckers!

nooshinjohn

GTO

msg wrote: »

way to go, John. rules are for suckers!

LOL... At least I didn't thread crap by posting a picture of a Ford.

GlennDog

GTO

Goat all day long and twice on Sunday. Just wish it was a rag top

Viking64

Charger

I love many cars from that era, but I simply could never stand GTOs or Chevelles. They just remind me of some Vermont redneck kid trying to soup-up his mother's old car when I was in high school. HAHAHAHAHA

And as much as I despise "The Dukes of Hazzard", I would pick the Charger. You only need to see "Bullitt" once to fall in love with those and a 1968 Fastback Mustang with a 390.

pitdogg2

Charger

The 440 6pk was a pavement chewing beast!
I mean if I can't have a boss 429 or Cobra Torino I'll pick the Mopar.

CGTIII

GTO

Freshman year in college, one of my neighbors had a really nice red GTO ragtop with white racing stripes. Used to give us plebes rides occasionally. LOL
Also my first personal car was a Pontiac - a 1970 Catalina in avocado green sold to me on my 21st birthday by my Grandfather for $1. (But I wasn't allowed to drive it until I replaced the water pump. Oof!)

SIHAB

None of them, I prefer the dust covered Yugo, sitting out in the barn...

I kinda wish I still had my grandmothers 1972 Olds Cutlass
with the 350 rocket engine in it.

tonyb

GTO

GTO....not even a contest of the choices given.

Emlyn

Charger

And people think the grilles on cars are too big these days.



I'd take the Charger for looks and cos it's got a Hemi.

msg

GTO

I'm a little depressed right now because I'm stuck with an American Muscle Car that I don't know much about. If it doesn't have an 8-track, I'm slittin' my wrists. If I gotta drive 70s American, I should at least be able to blast Freddy Fender from the sun-rotted dash mount mono speaker.

err, wait - are these still 60s?

Milito

Chevelle

Chevelle if it was a 454 version.

https://www.hemmings.com/stories/article/1970-chevrolet-chevelle-ss-454-ls6

I liked the earlier GTO's, but not that version. 65 was my favorite GTO, 389/360hp with 3 x 2bbl carbs.

BTW, street HEMI's back then were hard to keep in tune. The average Joe who bought one couldn't keep it tuned correctly. Not like it is now with computer controlled engines.

dromunds

Yeah, I had a 67 Dodge Dart GT in college, it had dual points, and they had to be set quite often. I got real good at it. Most kids don’t even know what points are. Or a carb for that matter.

F1nut

GTO

Don, I don't miss points or carbs, but I do miss the simplicity of the older cars.

bcwsrt

Charger

All great cars, and shown in totally stock configuration (right down to the tires) and in the same, or similar enough, colors to make the polling real and relevant. A little surprised to see the GTO that far out in front. Love the orphan brands, though.

I had the Mopars engrained in me at my impressionable ages, so it is a no-brainer choice for me, even thought I'm not a big Dodge Charger fan, honestly. My dad owned and collected mostly Plymouths for as long as I can remember, though oddly, he did have a few GM products along the way for his daily drivers. Went to many NASCAR races in the '70s and Richard Petty was my childhood hero.

On HEMIs ... Dad had a 2-,--- mile '67 HEMI GTX for awhile in the late-80's/early-90's, which I was fortunate to get to drive a fair amount. Yep, things like points, dual quad carbs and solid lifters are not for sissies. But, when everything is working together as it should, all the sounds, smells and feelings of g-forces happening at the same time are a thing of beauty from an era that will never exist again. That said, he also had a '70 Superbird with a 440 6bbl. Only car I have driven up until I got my '17 Challenger Hellcat that would set you back in the seat at 70 mph like you were taking off from a dead stop and keep pulling hard for as fast as you dared to go. The GTX had nowhere near the top end pull that Superbird had.

Thanks for the thread, @treitz3. Good time thinking back on those memories.

Emlyn

Charger

My dad owned and daily drove a 1966 Ford Fairlane GT 390 from shortly after I was born until I was about 7 years old. It affected me positively. My family went from Ohio to Nova Scotia and back one summer in that. AC was winding the windows down.

SCompRacer

Chevelle

Milito wrote: »

Chevelle if it was a 454 version.

Me too. The LS6 had the closed or bathtub chamber heads. Power robbing and high emissions. Open chamber heads on the rat offered a significant boost in power and better emissions. Lots of guys messed up when torquing the big chevy 7/16" rod bolts and spun rod bearings. GM had a torque spec of ~65-70 lb-ft, but you were supposed to torque for, IIRC, like .006" to .007" bolt stretch. It could take 80 to 95 lb-ft to get that stretch. I started out racing Super Stock with a '68 428CJ Mustang fastback. Eventually moved to the Chevy, raced a Camaro.

Points need good lube packed behind the rubbing block or they would wear quickly.

I was pretty good at carbs. Guys would put big overlap cams in, lose inches of vacuum and they couldn't get them to idle properly. Idle air screws were unresponsive, power valves open. They would idle so rich due to the idle transfer slots being fully exposed and throttle plates open so far the main venturis were dripping fuel.

Drill the right size holes in the throttle plates and you'd end up with proper idle speed with only .040" to .060" of the idle transfer slot exposed beneath the throttle plate. Swap power valves with lower opening ones or use power valve plugs and jet up a bit to compensate for the extra fuel power valves made available to the main jet well.

On the Quadrajet, you'd have to use lower tension springs to keep the primary metering rods in the jets at idle. Some NHRA classes required the QJ so you had to know what to do or pay someone to do it.

Ah, the good old days and my old guy memories.

audioluvr

Charger

Good thing your dad didn't also have these.

GlennDog

GTO

Emlyn wrote: »

And people think the grilles on cars are too big these days.

Teenagers do the darndest things ... alcohol consumption wasn’t allowed in Michigan until 21 but the drinking age in Windsor Ontario Canada was 19 and as luck would have it, only about 30 minutes south of Detroit . . . Sooo

ROAD TRIP

The ginormous space between the rad and the grill in my 74 Charger would facilitate not one but 2 cases of beer. IIRC, the spacing between the grill was rather large. To keep the RCMP from suspecting anything as we approached customs, we’d slide the cases into black plastic garbage bags.
Did that many times. Never got caught

boston1450

GTO

2023/24 Chevy Chevelle will be hitting the streets soon. Up to 275,000.00 is crazy.

boston1450

GTO

IIRC the body is on a Camaro frame

msg

GTO

Nice, Rich.
Got me thinking about "my own" old days playing with the Weber conversion in my 87 Toyota 22R. I wound up with a nice collection of jets and a decent working knowledge of the ins and outs of getting Webers installed and tuned in those trucks. It all hinged on proper install and seal otherwise the vacuum leaks would cause overcompensation of one control or other, and misconfiguration. Get it well sealed and reasonably configured and it was a pretty smooth, reliable setup for years at a stretch with minimal adjustment and cleaning. Carbs def had their benefits. It was analog for cars and trucks!

SCompRacer wrote: »

Milito wrote: »

Chevelle if it was a 454 version.

Me too. The LS6 had the closed or bathtub chamber heads. Power robbing and high emissions. Open chamber heads on the rat offered a significant boost in power and better emissions. Lots of guys messed up when torquing the big chevy 7/16" rod bolts and spun rod bearings. GM had a torque spec of ~65-70 lb-ft, but you were supposed to torque for, IIRC, like .006" to .007" bolt stretch. It could take 80 to 95 lb-ft to get that stretch. I started out racing Super Stock with a '68 428CJ Mustang fastback. Eventually moved to the Chevy, raced a Camaro.

Points need good lube packed behind the rubbing block or they would wear quickly.

I was pretty good at carbs. Guys would put big overlap cams in, lose inches of vacuum and they couldn't get them to idle properly. Idle air screws were unresponsive, power valves open. They would idle so rich due to the idle transfer slots being fully exposed and throttle plates open so far the main venturis were dripping fuel.

Drill the right size holes in the throttle plates and you'd end up with proper idle speed with only .040" to .060" of the idle transfer slot exposed beneath the throttle plate. Swap power valves with lower opening ones or use power valve plugs and jet up a bit to compensate for the extra fuel power valves made available to the main jet well.

On the Quadrajet, you'd have to use lower tension springs to keep the primary metering rods in the jets at idle. Some NHRA classes required the QJ so you had to know what to do or pay someone to do it.

Ah, the good old days and my old guy memories.

mantis

Charger

I really like all 3 cars but the Charger is my top choice followed strong by the GTO. I really love that car . A friend of mine back in the day had one and I loved driving around in it. Actually both the Charger and GTO , I had friends that owned them and I got to spend time in both of those cars. Both wonderful.

SCompRacer

Chevelle

msg wrote: »

Nice, Rich.
Got me thinking about "my own" old days playing with the Weber conversion in my 87 Toyota 22R. I wound up with a nice collection of jets and a decent working knowledge of the ins and outs of getting Webers installed and tuned in those trucks. It all hinged on proper install and seal otherwise the vacuum leaks would cause overcompensation of one control or other, and misconfiguration. Get it well sealed and reasonably configured and it was a pretty smooth, reliable setup for years at a stretch with minimal adjustment and cleaning. Carbs def had their benefits. It was analog for cars and trucks!

Nice to hear from another carb guy! Webers offered fantastic off idle performance! Great low and mid-range torque. They looked kewl set up on a v8 too!

My last street car was a '72 Chevelle SS replicant. I installed the SS dash with tach to make it more convincing. It had a 468BBC. I used a vacuum secondary carb that was opened up for more cfm. (Machine shop I worked at part time had flow bench).

I ruined a couple of vacuum pots before arriving at the perfect depth slots under the vacuum pot check ball so they would open quick without bogging the rpm. The check ball was important to rapidly close secondaries when you let off the the throttle and acted as restriction for slow opening. (There is no accelerator pump on vacuum secondary carb. Just idle transfer slot and main venturis).

The Chevelle ran 11 teens. Guys couldn't believe a vacuum secondary carb could do that. Much more streetable than a mechanical secondary.

The rear suspension had Super Stock mod to change angle of upper control arms on rear diff. That changed height and point of lift, instant center. Cars have a length and height center of gravity. The idea is to push at or just below the height center.

If you draw lines through a four link suspension, where they meet is the point of lift and push. (I worked part time at a drag race chassis shop too).

simm

Chevelle

I really like the GTO but went with my teenage obsession- Chevelle SS.

bcwsrt

Charger

polrbehr

GTO

I would take the GTO as well - My first car was a 1970 Tempest in gray primer (not really) so the GTO was the upgrade I could never afford.

gudnoyez

GTO

Friends Dad had GTO and a Barracuda both cars I would of loved to have owned.