It's a plan as simple as black and white. Cripes, it's a Malibu, a drone wannabe, not a namby-pamby, everybody's-got-one SS. Intimidation factor zero. That oat-white icon of purity, good, and seemingly estranged from violence, enables a vile and vicious module of the latest and most ferocious technology. It's so quiet at idle that the rubes only register a wimpy tick.
Twenty-nine-year-old Scott Emanuele's '71 Chevelle is an understated attraction. In white-bread white and completely void of the gewgaws that always tell lies, it's a damn sleeper. Yeah, check out those funky Ben Hur wheels from the 1980s. Sure-just don't look under the front bumper.
One Scott is a Renaissance man (he built every system in the car). The other Scott harbors the ancient bloodlust of a pillaging Hun. We're very proud that he's a mother dog hot rodder. Most of his Chevelle was wrought by intuition, ingenuity, and an argon flame. He also had the help of friend Scott Gouza, known body massager and good paint man. Somewhere along the trail, they pulled a frame-off restoration.
Emanuele's got a skinflint streak running through him like a vein of gold. He built the motor-turbo ducting to oil pan-for a stunning $12,000. Wheedling, bartering, chiseling, and knee-crawling for that almighty bargain became a given. But our prodigy needed more than wits and guile. The ability to envision, plan, and "manufacture" an adapter, a spacer, a ducting tube, bracket, or an entire system was more or less mandatory. Scott was ready for that, too. He makes his living as a welding supervisor.
Last spring, friends talked...
Last spring, friends talked owner Scott Emanuele into going to a chassis dyno at a large car show that he drove 125 miles to get to. At the time, Emanuele had twin Turbonetics 60-1 Hi-Fi turbos that pumped out 751hp to the wheels with 93 octane at 14psi of boost and 16 degrees of timing. With the larger Precision 61mm ball-bearing turbos, Emanuele has yet to dyno the combo, but figures it's worth roughly 825hp to the wheels.
This car had already seen too many small-blocks, some of them normally aspirated, some of them, like the tall-deck 427 small-block, were barely tractable and snagged with high maintenance. He wanted something immensely powerful but mild mannered, something that would run exquisitely on pump gas and not crap out on the road.
"My favorite things about the car? I love the motor," Scott gushed. "I love how it drives and the power it makes. I love the look of the car. It looks like a fast street car should-stock! I like the sleeper effect the Malibu has, too. Nobody expects a thing because it looks stock and is super quiet.
"With the 427, I used an NOS Big Shot plate set-up with a 275-hp shot. After I went through two bottles, I knew that was the power I needed all the time, so I sold the motor."