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Thread: Cars that ’should’ have been

  1. #1

    Cars that ’should’ have been

    In the hot rod/street rod world, there exists a thing called a 'phantom car'. This is an antique car that someone built when that model never existed in the first place. Here is my first shot at a list of phantom cars that I would like to see built.

    Buick TrackMaster - Suppose that Buick had built a special model of its 1949 or 1950 Roadmaster for stock car racing. It would be a lightened 2-door fastback body with a bored-out straight-8 based on the 320 cubic inch block. The engine would have a special cross-flow head based on the ARDUN hemi head, domed pistons with 11-to-1 compression, stronger rods, a bottom-end girdle, 4 2-barrel carbs, headers, and a hot cam. A four-speed with a floor shifter, and an improved racing suspension with front and rear sway bars would round out the package.

    Cadillac DeVilleX - In the late 60's, all GM divisions except Cadillac built a hot rod on the GM A-body platform - the Chevy Chevelle, the Pontiac GTO, the Olds Cutlass, and the Buick GS, with their best engines. Suppose that Cadillac had done the same thing. Imagine a 1970 Buick GS with long Caddy taillights and a Caddy grille, aluminum front sheet metal, a 4-speed manual, with a special Caddy 472 under the hood! Think about the Caddy 472 with special big port/big valve aluminum heads, a factory aluminum dual quad intake, fat headers and sidepipes, 11.5-1 compression forged pistons, and a hot cam - say 575 horsepower and 700 ft-lbs of torque! This would be a very cool cruiser with amazing power!

    Chevy ZX11 - In 1963, Chevy made a few Z11 427s for drag racing. These were factory-modified 409s with special heads, intakes and cams, and the cars had aluminum parts to make them lighter. What if they had gone one better, and made a 1962 ZX11 based on the better-looking 1962 bubbletop body, with an all-aluminum Z11 427 but using a 4-inch stroke crank for 512 cubes? And using an aluminum engine and a totally aluminum or fiberglass body to get the weight down to, say, 2400 lbs! This would have been a screamer, capable of running in the 9s!

    Does anyone else have any phantom dreams?
    Last edited by onetruerick; 02-08-2008 at 01:31 PM.

  2. #2
    yeah, a 1971 Electra R/T 2dr. it's already got all the track and wheelbase you could possibly want. go with a 4 speed ( more nowadays ), boxed frame, headers and dual exhaust and put it on a diet and it would be vicious anywhere.
    The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.
    Vladimir Lenin

    Government schooling is about "the perfect organization of the hive."
    H.H. Goddard, Human Efficiency (1920)

  3. #3
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    Its intresting that you list 49-50 buick "racer" first up, and, as a phantom car. It actually was going to happen, only about 10 years earler. However, buick was'ent about to have the term "racer" or "hot rod" even remotely associated with their cars, it would have been instant death. That sort of stuff was viewed very differently then, than now. As I've blurbed about elsewhere here, the 263 was ready to go by 1940. This was a cutting edge, state of the art engine. Nobody had anything like it. Question is; just where were they going to put this engine? Entry level Special? Doubt it. Pull the 320 out of the big series and put it in there? Even more unlikely. Just so happens, buick had a already established contender. The Century! Buick had already discovered the big engine in the smaller package, a shoe-in. Harley Earl had his very fast looking torpedo fastbacked bodys ready for the 40-41 year. They may look dated now, but at the time these cars had the same or more impact as the 63 split window vette did when it came out. Buick was in the "cat-bird" seat. Would buick have brought out the 263 "full tilt boggie" right off? No. The engine was built to handle a LOT more power than buick ever would have put in it, but when the racers got ahold of it, and they would have, things would become very different. Buick was going to do yearly improvements and by the late 40's it would have been a handfull. The "rocket 88" would have stood no chanch. It was going to happen. No dream. What did happen? Years ago I read something somewhere. Harlow Curtice took the GM top brass out to the buick test track about 1939, to see engines being tested. The boys put on a great show ripping up the pavement. Harlow thought it was great! The top brass, rather less so....I'm reading this and thinking "these cars are fast?!!", I got one!! Fast is not a word I'm thinking of, HAH, LOL!! It was'ent 248's or 320's they were testing. It was the 263. Took years for it to dawn on me. Terms like "hot rod", "racing car" got applied. Instant death. Alleycat

  4. #4
    As I've blurbed about elsewhere here, the 263 was ready to go by 1940. This was a cutting edge, state of the art engine.

    do you have any blueprints or design specs you could upload for these motors? you make them sound interesting.
    The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.
    Vladimir Lenin

    Government schooling is about "the perfect organization of the hive."
    H.H. Goddard, Human Efficiency (1920)

  5. #5
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    A great idea, Bob! Except for another "funny" thing about these engines; buick published practily nothing about the 263! A engine that in all likelyhood would have changed the automotive landscape, they have nothing to say....Rather odd. Over in the str8 forum a while back OneTrueRick asked for the differences between 248/320 and 263. Charley responded with the 50 buick service manual f263 description of the changes. I looked it up, its a paragraph about 1"x 8". Thats it! No photos of the 263, no technical drawings, no, NOTHING!! I don't think "263" was ever mentioned ever again in any of buicks print. The service manuals are mostly a rehash of old stuff, photos and all. I added all that I know to date to what Charley put in, and thats about all there is. As I'm working on a performance manual for str8's, its increasing obvious that some mechnical drawings are going to be required, I'll have to do them, but at later date. Alleycat

  6. #6
    If Buick had decided to continue the straight-8, a redesign would have been in order. The cars to come after 1953 would have lower hood lines, so the height of the straight-8 would have needed to shrink. To do this, the straight-8 would need to change from a small-bore/long stroke design to big bore/short stroke. Consider a change to a 4-inch bore and 3-inch stroke, giving 302 cubic inches. The required cylinder length would be the stroke plus the distance from the top edge of the top ring to the bottom edge of the oil ring, plus the distance from the top of the top ring to the top of the cylinder. Assume a 2.5 inch distance from the top ring to the oil ring, and a piston that comes with .125 of the top of the cylinder. This would give a cylinder length of 3.0 + 2.5 +.125=5.625 inches. Add another inch at the bottom and you get 6.625 inches. Since the stroke is shortened, the rods could be shorter, and the crankcase could be made considerably more compact as well. Since this design would save considerable iron, they could have thrown in nine main bearings and the resulting block would still be much lighter.

    Assume that this redesign was happening in, say, 1952. The Ardun heads had existed for a number of years at this point, and the Chrysler, Dodge and Desoto hemis were on the market as well. So Buick engineers could have created a crossflow hemi head, keeping the cam in the same position in the block and using the hemi-type valve train, and providing 8 intake ports on the passenger side and 8 exhaust ports on the driver's side (to keep the exhaust system in the same place). Four-barrel carbs existed, so they could have easily built a nice manifold with a sideways-mounted 4-barrel and dual exhaust manifolds. They would have pitched the design to Buick management reminding them that the Ardun hemi design was developed to give Ford flathead-powered garbage trucks enough power to haul their loads, and the other changes were to make them competitive with Chrysler and to save weight and money. An in-house alternative to the hemi design could be found in the Allison division, borrowing the head design of the Allison V12 aircraft engine, with four valves per cylinder. This would have increased production costs over the hemi design, though.

    The resulting lightweight, low-profile 302 Buick Hemi would have been a smooth-running screamer, capable of 6000 rpm or more without danger. Since they had access to parts from other GM divisions, maybe they could have borrowed a supercharger from the diesel truck guys for the Roadmaster model. After all, if you are going to dream, you might as well dream big, right?

  7. #7

    6,000 rpm without danger

    We have ran our 320 at 6,500 rpms drag racing for years, without danger!
    Setup right, the straight eight will take it. Plus a couple of times I ran it to 7,500 rpms. Still held together. Great engine!! Lots of torque.

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