Blast From The Past Thread

RegalBegal said:

Ok ill jump in. Heres a few of my old cars and yes, im under a Nova thats on stacked wheels. The one i miss the most is the 69 Pontiac Custom S Convertable.

Click to expand...

I always wanted an LSC. Fell in love with them as a kid

Dont mind if i do, I like to show a few pics of my old Hot Rods
I went from racing Motocross, to actually trading my moto x bike for a 1970 Cuda, My first Hi-performance car was a 440 +6 car, 4 speed, Dana Rear, shaker Hood, worth a pretty penny today, This pic is from 1979, yep thats me standing behind it

my old man got tired of helping me with the Cuda, and it really was a gas hog, couldve been the way i drove it! 6 barrels wide open make a cool sound! so i sold it and got this 68 Camaro pretty much stock

I couldnt leave it alone and ended up Building it up, Paint, interior, drivetrain, blown small block ...

ive also owned a 67, another 68 and a 69 Camaro, the 69 was my DD for a lot of years
those pics are in photobucket jail
I moved out of the Camaro phase when i realized there were tons of Camaros around
I built a few V8 Vegas
my first

my 2nd

Drove it for a few years but it was traction limited on the street, it did run 10.90s @ 122 on a 9" slick at the track in 1985
So i built it over again, backhalving/roll caged it in the bays of my gas station, took the blower off and added NOS, had this car for a lot of years, many small blocks in it over that time, I sold it to a guy in Michigan, at the time it was running 9.0's @151 mph

my Son riding shotgun, is now 30 yrs old!!
i had another ratty V8 Vega, that was my DD, built with cast off parts from the yellow car, it wasnt pretty enough to show pics, but i have em
in the early 90s is when i got interested in G bodies
built this 81 Malibu to race and was my first Big Block engine i built, 509 cubic inch, it ran 9.30s @148mph on a small tire with a little NOS

cant forget my Dually Suburban was my DD and tow vehicle for a long time, a trained eye will tell this truck had a lot of custom touches

i gotta shovel snow and get to work, ive had other cars.. 70 Nova, 71 Pontiac Lemans, 81 Camaro, worth mentioning, probably 30 more cars that were forgettable, but the ones shown were ones i built... Hope youz enjoyed my Blast from the Past!

joesregalproject said:

I love Mark VIIs.

Click to expand...

My son called me the other day and said he wanted to build one with a manual. We had and '88 LSC with the HO motor, black with burgundy Leather dad ordered new in '87. It was a great car. Raising the height sensors for the airbags lowered the car. I'd have little linear actuators control this if I had one today.

My dad loaned it to his down on his luck brother around '99 and his brother sold it... probably for drinking money.

In the late '90's my dad saw a M151A2 for sale in Hemmings in my town in South Carolina and wanted me to check it out. I sent him pictures and he sent the guy money and I ended up with one of the few M151's that didn't get crushed in my garage:



The A2's didn't have the deadly swing arm rear suspension that the A1's had (it was more like a Porsche 911 rear suspension), so it really didn't need the roll cage. The M60 was a nice touch.

Because most were crushed (Congress was afraid of the liability from rollovers), spare parts were dirt cheap. NOS motors were like $150, Differential were $25, etc.

Almost like the one I drove in Vietnam. Mine was all OD no roll cage. It was an A1 with a M60 , a radio, and a wire cutter on the front.

michmalibuman said:

Almost like the one I drove in Vietnam. Mine was all OD no roll cage. It was an A1 with a M60 , a radio, and a wire cutter on the front.

Click to expand...

It's Ironic that all of the A1's I see in movies (like independence day, etc) DON'T have cages, but every A2 has a cage, and the A1's are the ones that supposedly killed people and made congress force all of the M151's to be crushed..

I think NOS cage kits were like $100 back in the 90's. You can't buy that much straight pipe for that.

I remember when I first joined the Army seeing the last of the 151's on the road & more flattened getting ready for their last road trip. Those were something to ride in, I never got the chance to get licensed to drive one.

oddly, I really miss this one.... bought it for $600 and put a new fuel pump in it, then replaced all the suspension bushings, and the little thing drove like it was on rails...

I ended up selling it off because I caught myself going around 30mph curves at over 75mph, and was worried I was going to kill myself in it some day...

only other car that I kick myself over in the last few years, is my old 95 caprice...

factory purple pearl metallic, detective's car (no holes or stickers)... fast as hell, but the heater worked only when it wanted to, so I sold it because I got tired of freezing on the 25 mile journey to work in the winter....

I grew up listening to my Dad and others reminiscing about all their cool cars that got away. I swore to myself that if at all possible, I was going to keep everything that I could so I have no regrets. Here are some of my past.

My 68 Cougar. My first car and my Dad and I did it up like this with everything cool at the time in 1982 when I turned 16. My Grandfather passed it on to me when I was 12. He was the original owner. This is how it looked in 1982. If it was raining or snowing, I was riding the bus. It's been gone through twice more improving it each time since then and I still have it. .
My senior year got my first real job and I needed a winter beater. A $400 66 Bonneville Vert fit the bill. It was so rotted that all the tire smoke, and there was a lot from the high compression 389, would come right in the car. This one was painted with a brush.



I needed a more commuter friendly car for college and I had a 72 Cutlass for a few weeks when this little old lady creampuff 74 Ford Elite came available. I sold the Cutlass to my cousin and this became my commuter car. I wrecked it really bad once and used two parts cars to fix it.

After college I turned it into an Enduro Stock Car. I miss this as a race car more than most.

It was replaced by my first G Body, an 86 Grand Prix that turned out to be a lemon. It had so many things wrong with it that when I fixed everything I tried selling it but no one wanted to give me what it was really worth. So I decided to keep it and got t-Boned in the driver's door by a carload of drunk teens in a blizzard. It totalled the car and I ended up in the hospital. But I got almost a grand more than I paid for the car via their insurance. No pictures of that car. Trying to put it out of my life. With the insurance money I bought this 88 T-Bird which is really what I wanted to begin with. I still have this and it still looks like this. Only deviations from stock are the Turbo Coupe wheels (it's a V8 model) and I painted the grill the body color. This one will go to Jr. next year when he starts driving... by MY rules of course.



A series of other daily driver /beaters followed: 77 Monte Carlo, 84 Olds Delta 88, then this 77 Grand Prix. I cleaned it up, went through it mechanically, added the wheels and dual exhaust. The wheels came from one of the renditions of the Cougar, and are my Wagon's non winters wheels now.

After 10 winters this car started getting really shabby. and had just rolled 250,000 miles. The body and frame were still decent, so I swapped in an Olds 350 in place of the worn out Pontiac 350 and drove it like this for 40,000 more miles. I also returned to my roots and stepped up from a brush paint job on this one. It got the full foam roller treatment. LOL The Cutlass wheels were also laying around. It's original Pontiac Rally Wheels are now the winter wheels on my Wagon.

With this now in beater configuration, I needed something nicer for everyday use. I found my 78 Delta 88 on CL about 5 years ago. It came with the Cutlass wheels that are on the GP. But I swapped to the 15 inchers from Wheel Vintiques. This one is still with us and will be for a long time to come.


When the Grand Prix went to the junkyard with 290,000 miles on it. I needed another beater and that's when my wagon joined the fleet.

Now we're all up to date. Sorry for the novel. LOL