War baby. Not baby boomer. Boomers were born after the conflagration known as WWII, which had suddenly come to a halt when Harry Truman brought the insane incandescent hammer down on the Japanese mainland. Both these groups are major players in the country's economy and represent a huge chunk of its disposable income-that's the fluff money that buys hot rod parts to build hot rod cars, and, in some cases, allows them to have the rides they couldn't afford back in the musclecar '60s and '70s. Some just like to relive the past over and over again.
War baby Kenny Van Zill (62) could have gone down the billet, big-wheel, air-bag Pro-Touring road, stressing his fiscal year time and again, but he was reminded to keep the faith, just as he had in the old days. And what's more, there has never been a Chevy in his entire repertoire of one Plymouth, two Fords, three Pontiacs and eight Oldsmobiles. They are clearly Van Zill's fetish.
In the space for spouse on the tech sheet, Kenny wrote: "None since 1976. My model car collection was growing and I needed more room. She had to go." There's probably a bit more to it than those three sentences, but he's been a free agent for 30 years, doing what comes naturally to car guys: cruising, doin' the Florida's Gulf Coast beaches, building hot cars, and acting like it was the good old days all over again. His current squeeze is an honest-to-God street-strip machine.
"I bought the car in '86 from my girlfriend at that time so she could buy a '70 Cutlass convertible. It had a 350 engine, was gold with a white vinyl top, and had the original factory bucket seat interior, which is still in the car. In '92, I dismantled the car, all but the bare body, which was left on the frame. All the parts I was going to reuse were rebuilt and refinished. My purpose was to build a Cutlass my way. I wanted a clean, quick, mostly original-looking Cutlass. It's a great body style."
This Olds is decidedly very un-Pro-Touring. It's like a fresh breeze because it doesn't pretend to be anything more than it really is, and it's an incarnation of every car Kenny's ever had. He began with the frame and stepped up from there. As for the handling proposition, Kenny looks at it like this: "I was heavy into go-kart racing at the time, so my right-turn-left-turn fix was satisfied every weekend. Besides, if you want your car to handle like a Porsche, buy a Porsche. It's gonna cost you the same." He dropped in a warmed-over 455 (aluminum intake manifold, Holley, mild cam and headers) and a Turbo 400 transmission and ran 13.30s.
Van Zill and his buds, Ted Allen and Paul Rohde, personalized his ride with minor, but meaningful custom touches. The rear bumper got custom dual exhaust outlets. The antenna sank into the fender. The trunk latch was erased. A '71 grille wound up in front. Though the hood may look stock, it's actually a fiberglass piece Kenny made to mock the W-30 piece, but different enough to accommodate a high-rise intake manifold and a 4-inch tall cleaner. With just as much purpose and conviction, he refinished the stock 15-inch steel wheels and bolted them over the stock brakes. A penny-squeezer as much as he is a pragmatist, the street-strip Olds maintains the manual steering box from a '69 sibling.
He anointed the Cutlass with six coats of DuPont black lacquer, a brave venture considering he did it in his garage with a 10hp Sears compressor. The key to the obsidian's glisten, said Kenny, was "many, many hours of block sanding and rubbing." That was in '95. He drove and showed it for the next five years and then up and parked the thing in 2000, "so I could spend more time on beer, women, and rock 'n' roll." Aha! Mr. Van Zill hasn't forgotten the really important things in life after all. Maybe he was dealing with his mid-life crisis, maybe not. At least he didn't run out and buy a new red Corvette convertible, get a nose ring, and start calling himself K-Dog.
Our protagonist kept on marching, searching for that elusive quantity. Kenny seems to never have grasped the been-there, done-that deal. Along about '03, he got a call from two more of his old drag racing droogies, Jim Barr and Rick Van Gorder. "We had quit racing in '72 and now the old Geritol Gang was returning." They had gotten it in their heads that it was time for Kenny to come back on line, ordering him to look under that mountain of newspapers in the garage to see if the favorite Olds hadn't turned to dust.
Not coincidentally, Jim is the principal at Jim Barr Performance (Naples, Fla.) and the builder of the new bullet. He began with the 455 block he sent straight to Collier Machine (Naples, Fla.) for the necessary clearance work. Collier punched the block 0.030 inch and balanced the rotating assembly, founding it on a hardened Olds crankshaft. Back at the ranch, Barr then filled the bores with 10.5:1 Ross pistons and pinned them to Eagle H-beams. The bumpstick (that's what they were called back in Kenny's day) is a COMP Cams grind that features 0.355/0.341-inch lift and 250/256 degrees duration at 0.050-inch. Barr flipped the engine over and screwed the Milodon pump, pickup, and oil pan in place.
Before he topped off the short-block, he sent the Edelbrock Performer RPM cylinder heads (2.07/1.68-inch valves, 77cc combustion chambers, 188cc intake ports) to Southern Performance Racing Engines for some minor porting. He torqued them home along with an Edelbrock Performer intake manifold and a 750cfm Holley carb. A homemade ram air system begins where the inboard headlights used to be. Fire in the hole is the province of an MSD ignition system (34 degrees total), and Hooker Super Comps (1-3/4x32x3) broom the waste through a 3-inch system to Flowmaster mufflers. Kenny claims no output figures for his combination, but the indicator is a 3,600-pound A-body that runs 11.31 at 117 miles per hour (on the NMCA Nostalgia Super Stock D/NSS 11.50 index). Kenny does like nitrous oxide (which was not available back in the day), but only when he's at the dentist.
The remainder of the drivetrain consists of a Turbo 400 from a '76 Caddy prepped by CRT Performance (Clearwater, Fla.), a 10-inch Turbo Action converter with a 2,500-rpm stall speed, and B&M shifter (and fluid cooler). A "stock" prop shaft passes torque to the Moser 12-bolt carrying 3.70:1 cogs.
Dave Stevens at No Bull Shit (NBS) Performance (St. Petersburg, Fla.) built him a rollbar to satisfy racing rules, protect his noggin, and add a modicum of torsional stiffness to the Cutlass' 35-year-old rails. He took the front and rear anti-sway bars from a 442, dropped in Moroso coils front and back, tempered suspension travel with Lakewood shocks, stabilized the rear axle with Edelbrock control arms (adjustable on the upper side) and then called it quits. Those M/T 275/60 ET Street Radials bite hard, launching the car and sending it down the track as quick and true as a ball bearing out of a slingshot's web. Since this is a real street-strip venture, whenever Kenny's in the proximity of open headers, he swaps the 750 Holley for an 830-cfm ProForm carburetor, removes the sway bars, and bolts on lightweight Weld Pro Star forgings.
Now, here's the part we really like. Even though Florida summers are heat-and-humidity bitches, Kenny doesn't feel right buttoned up in a cool-air cocoon. No, it's still the '60s as far as he's concerned. Other than power-assisted brakes, his car is solidly in the manual era: no air conditioning ("the car looks best with all the windows down"); he sits on the original saddle tan vinyl seats, twirling a Grant steering wheel (color: wood), and cozies up to the stock AM radio. His final words: "Shows are OK, but racing is a lot more fun than staring at cars from a folding chair." A beer or two might help, Kenny.