n America bigger is always better. A single cheeseburger is never as good as a double for lunch and most hot rodders believe the same goes for nitrous systems, carburetors, camshafts, and clutches …

But not always.

It’s a continuing battle. Street car horsepower and torque values have escalated in the last decade and now even domestic V-8 production cars are pumping out more than 700 hp and the latest Hellcat promises 1,000 hp from a production vehicle! This just exacerbates the boulevard horsepower boom and now everyone will assume they need four-digit horsepower. The truth is not everyone wants, needs, or can properly manage that much power. For every one guy who has the scratch to build a 1,000hp street car, there are hundreds of applications for the rest of the world in the 500- to 700hp range searching for a clutch.

By Barry Kluczyk Photography by The Author

ulling up the carpet on a vintage Chevy often comes with a sense of dread about the revelations below it. Rust, as it is said, never sleeps and floor repairs are almost a guarantee when it comes to restoration work, especially with early Camaros—whether it’s a comparatively small, localized issue or a more invasive spread of tin worm.

Surprisingly, rust wasn’t the issue with the floor in this story’s project car. It’s the latest ’69 Camaro build for Pro Touring pioneer Mark Stielow and Detroit-area Sled Alley was tasked with prepping the body and chassis for some Detroit Speed upgrades. After tearing down the car, they were pleasantly surprised to find essentially no rust in the body shell or floor but determined a floorpan replacement was still required. That’s because, when new, the car was immediately pressed into drag racing duty and it was clear it had suffered bumps and bruises of a wayward driveshaft or two and some precision clearance work with a sledgehammer. There were also some old patches used to correct other damage.

1. Installing the final details on a project car can be strenuous, but it’s rewarding.

here is no such thing as a quick paintjob on a classic car—it always escalates into a big project. Our original intention with this ’66 Nova was a driver-quality paintjob, but as things progressed, we couldn’t just settle for a subpar job. Although not exactly show quality, the bodywork and paint turned out nicely, but we can see how projects stall out at this stage. Some folks give up all together, so it’s common to find cars on the market that are painted but not reassembled. If you’ve ever bought a project that’s disassembled, you know the struggles of finding the right clips, hardware, and brackets to put it all together. Thankfully, Classic Industries has an extensive catalog of parts and pieces for our ’66 Nova, so we made a huge list and started chipping away at the reassembly process.

hen Bruce Valley originally dropped off his ’57 Chevy Handyman wagon to the Clampdown Competition headquarters, he had a short list of upgrades in mind—power steering, air conditioning, and an overdrive transmission. As these projects often do, three things led to another and another and another. Pretty soon, that short list took up much of the workshop’s whiteboard. The addition of an A/C compressor and power steering pump meant that a pulley swap and some bracketry was needed at the least. The transmission swap would be simple enough but as the build plan progressed, it became clear that what Bruce really wanted wasn’t simply a couple creature comforts, he wanted a turnkey hot rod that would be reliable and capable of pulling some serious highway miles around the Phoenix area without overheating or overworking itself, or overburdening the owner.

stablished in 1977, the Corvette Expo started as a great way to bring Corvette enthusiasts and parts vendors together. Like most successful meets, the Corvette Expo started small and has moved to several locations through the years to accommodate the growth. Now, nearly 50 years later, the event has settled into a wonderful home at the LeConte Center in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. The facility offers plenty of room inside the convention center and a massive parking lot for the outdoor portion of the show. The location is in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, providing a beautiful backdrop to the hundreds of Corvettes in attendance.