HOT ROD's Top 10 Vehicles From 1997 and 1998

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By Gray Baskerville and Jeff Koch

Photography: HOT ROD Archives

Welcome to the return of HOT ROD's top 10. Did ya miss us? This year we're making choices, raising consciousness, and presenting what we consider to be the finest rides to grace our pages in the past 24 months. (Since we didn't do one of these last season, we went through two years' worth of issues and screamed at, cajoled, and insulted each other into choosing the 10 most worthy!)

We sought out ideas and executions that advanced the vision of what hot rodding is and can be today—state-of-the-art, visionary, trendsetting titles that changed the face of our hobby, in some small way, forever. Long-established/recently-restored classics! such as the Hirohata Merc and Don Fransisco's Poncho-powered T-bird, were therefore ineligible. Beyond that caveat, the field was wide open, although we had a predilection toward drivers and racers in our tally. Is the era of the fairground car finally over?

We picked some vehicles unilaterally; 7 of our 10 came easy. We had no less than 25 candidates for the last three spots, all of which were propped up on the fence post and popped off one at a time. We threatened to make McGonegal go out in public, buy Baskerville shoes, make Magnante eat something other than pizza, yank Koch's cable TV so he couldn't watch wrestling, and force McGean to get a tan. Our wounds are healing nicely, thank you.

Five editorial voices. Ten cars. One tough task. You'll let us know if we missed something?

Frank Currie / Anaheim, California

Frank Currie, a 70-year-young hot rodder turned third-member supplier, did what most of us considered mission impossible. He built the first show-go-Power Touring participant in history and drove it to the Bonneville Salt Flats where it was timed at 205 mph, and then he toured it to Detroit under its own power. That shouldn't surprise those who know or have raced with (or against) Currie, who has been building and driving rods since the end of WWII. Currie's varied interests include collecting old Fords, "jeeping," and winning the Great American Race. So his Boyd Coddington/Marcel DeLay/Greg Davis/Currie-constructed triple-threat highboy is merely the latest accomplishment in a 50-plus-year involvement with rods and components. When his sons gave the confirmed "Fordnatic" an SVO 429 Shotgun for a birthday present, Currie got in a hurry. A couple of years later he was on his way up I-15 to the Salt Flats, proving that life begins at 70 and 200 mph. By doing what has never been done before, Curries highboy deserves to be our HOT ROD of the Year.

Dave Tottino / Castroville, California

Fitting modern running gear into and under classic bodywork, and making an old car stop, go, and handle like a new one, is the essence of the Pro Touring movement. Dave Tottino's car is a one-car decathlon of power and style. Its Paul Newman-built tube chassis supports a small-block Corvette LT1, six-speed box, front and rear suspension, and ABS, There are most-subtle custom touches to the '57's 'glass bod, the kind that make you do a double take, the kind we like best. Dig the gently flared wheel openings that house ZR1 rolling stock and a tilted front end that opens along the upper edge of the cove on the front quarter. (You didn't notice that the hood shut-lines were missing?) Thus far, Dave Tottino's Vette is the ultimate expression of the late-'90s way to modernize a prized old Vette-ran.

Hank and Sandy Aguirre / San Bruno, California

What is it with classic-'50s two-seaters getting reborn into stylistic tours-de-force? First Tottino's Vette, then Hank and Sandy Aguirre's T-bird—manual-shifted megabuck marvels that were built to be driven. It's clean, tasteful, and brings this classic to the dance in '90s-style duds. Modifications range from the obvious (shaved scoop and door handles, reshaped grille, enlarged rear wheelwells) to the obscure (fitting a '57 dash to the double-nickel double-seater) and are amply evidenced throughout. Even more substantial work transpired under the sheetmetal—the Mustang II front suspension and a chassis that was raised (to accept coil-overs and a four-link rear) and notched (to make room for 275/40ZR17 rubber on Cobra R rims). Underhood, a supercharged, fuel-injected 351W pumps in the power. They say it takes a real man (or woman) to cut up a genuine classic. Is this real enough for ya?

George Poteet / Memphis, Tennessee

Dare to be Different is rodding's equivalent of Formula Libre, a place where imagination is the only limiting factor. CadZZilla was one example, CheZoom another. Now Sniper—a sort of half Savoy, half Viper dreamed up by Troy Trepanier and augmented by Chip Foose's imaging and metal crafting. But who was to fund this high-buck hybrid? George Poteet's considerable pocketbook provided the wherewithal to convert a two-dimensional dream into a three-dimensional reality. With its completion came numerous honors, national recognition, and a 130-mph police warning on a very successful Power Tour West.

Steve Strope / Sherman Village, California

Call this one Bitchin on a Budget. In every generation, there are builders who combine new ideas and concepts in ingenious new ways. They are simultaneously young enough, speed-crazy enough, creative enough, and broke-enough to build a killer ride while remaining within the wallet, however meager it might be. Steve Strope, barely 30, is of this new generation. The thought of a gold '66 Charger sounds like an awkward start, but Strope has pulled it off with style—and without changing a single body line. Ground to floor, and thanks in part to some horse-trading, this Mope cost Strope a mere $10,000—including labor and paint. That's peanuts for a crate-motor, 17-inch-tires, 100-plus-mph cruisin', trend-setting Top 10 ride. Strope's "Skully" is shown here in color for the first time. It deserves it.

Dave Rentsman / Greenville, Michigan

In some regards, Rentsman's street-legal "Pure Funn" AA/Altered Bantam is not that different from Frank Currie's HROTY winning Boss 705 Deuce: both are very powerful Long Haul Power Tour cars, their owners/builders drove them thousands of miles to run their respective hearts out at the track, and then drove them home again entirely without mechanical incident. Currie went from SoCal to Bonneville (ran 205 mph), then to Pleasanton, California, and back; Rentsman left Michigan in a snow storm, drove to the Pomona, California, drags (running 10s in the quarter), and back to Michigan on Power Tour. While Currie ran an EFI Ford, Rentsman hammered a blown, carbureted, fire-breathin' Hemi that took up more space on the chassis than the passenger compartment. The lack of a windshield meant that goggles were necessary, and thar Rentsman got beat up plenty by wind, sun, cops, and bugs alike. The Bantam stretches the very definition of a street car, which is precisely why we picked it.

Joe and Jeff Kugel / La Habra, California

One goal of land speed racers remains elusive—the first passenger car, be it open or closed, to break the magical 300mph barrier. And there is a tinge of irony here as well. Instead of being salt-encrusted, land speed vets, Jeff and Joe Kugel—a couple of Generation X-ers who, with father Jerry, build street rods and related components for a living—own and drive this twin-turbo small-block powered Trans Am. This particular Pontiac has the potential (a two-way 295-mph average in 1997) to become the first Detroit offering, and therefore, the first real hot rod to take home a 300mph timeslip.

Boyd Coddington / Stanton, California

One of hot rodding's primary tenets is the realm of "What if?" That's what happened when Boyd Coddington and Chip Foose decided to reprise CheZoom with Rod-Zoom. "What if GM had been playing with the 59 Impala proportions two years earlier?" The two of them, with the help of Coddington's crew, embarked on a shoebox classic, a "phantasmic" 57 Chevrolet convertible. A donor '59 Impala lost everything but the cowl and windshield frame, and the '57 was reincarnated with a combination of gennie, repro, and handformed sheetmetal assemblies supported by a custom-built frame, Ze Corvette Sussuys pension, and powered by an EFI small-block. To prove its worth, Foose drove the phantom across the country, without a single gremlin.

Alan Johnson / San Clemente, California

Henry Ford's venerable 1932 roadster has received more transplants than 144 Hollywood starlets. For years, Alan Johnson had wanted to create an original rod. So when a pal offered him a free four-cam, 32-valve Cadillac Northstar V-8, the former mechanical engineer turned welding guru jumped at the chance. With a new power-plant in his palms, he had an old reason to strike an arc. Not only did Johnson build his own car, he has begun to develop hot parts for the Northstar system. Zora Duntov, the father of the Corvette, prompted Chevrolet to offer high-performance options. Johnson, the rodder, is doing Caddy's work all by himself.

Lynwood Woods / Tinley Park, Illinois

Drag racing lost its soul when the NHRA's racing program became contrived and predictable. Inevitably, the first match-race Pro Mod was conceived, followed shortly by Outlaw Street, in style, substance, and sound. Lynwood Woods' '66 Goat—big, bad, and bright—epitomizes Outlaw Street as its blown, alky-burning, street-lethal best. His GTO—cloacked in near-stock body panels over a Willie Rells chassis, powered by a Keith Black Olds V-8, and driven by Randy Adler—is a 200-plus-mph door slammer. Moreover, it retains OEM accoutrements and epitomizes ingenuity in action.

This story was originally published in the January 1999 issue of HOT ROD. MOTORTREND and HOT ROD's rich magazine history and legacy dating back to 1948 is something highly valued by its longtime readers, and that's why we've invested deeply to make the content available to you in a modern and accessible format. In the interest of transparency, these magazine articles are presented as originally published, without modification, and may contain content that does not reflect the company's contemporary values and standards.