A supercharger sticking through a hole in the hood is cool, but a supercharger that’s almost as big as the hood itself is so ridiculous that it’s become iconic. This Camaro, once deemed a doctored photo, is sporting a supercharger from a freight train.
Need a hole? The kit comes with a fancy paper template, powder-coated brackets, gaskets, shiny bolts, everything. Want to go fast but hide all the go-fast parts under the hood? If the low-profile performance parts won’t fit, someone surely makes a slightly taller hood. Back in the day, pre-internet, the magazine ads could only offer so much, and the local speed shop was only so big, so people had to improvise.
Not all engine parts were offered in aluminum rather than cast iron, and not all sheet metal could be replaced with lightweight fibreglass. Need less weight? The answer is a hole. Aluminum and fibreglass are light, but nothing is lighter than a hole.
I love looking at old drag cars and hot rods. Some have the interior structure Swiss-cheesed, and some even have the exterior body panels punched here and there. My favourite treatment is a hole in the hood with a big chunk of the engine sticking out. A few decades ago, that was the ultimate statement. Sometimes it was a supercharger, sometimes a tunnel ram, and sometimes it was something as lame as a big spacer between the carburetor and air cleaner. However, I will give credit where credit is due, as that’s still better than pulling an Eddie Winslow and bolting the air cleaner to the hood.
Sawing a hole into the hood of your muscle car was so popular that I’ve seen chrome trim that looked factory around the body of the supercharger and pulley. I can’t for the life of me find any evidence that this trim existed, so what I saw may have been custom, but seeing it on numerous occasions in different parts of the world leads me to believe that someone once offered it.
Now that turbochargers are common, it’s all about stealth. Run off of exhaust pressure, it’s easy to tuck them off to the side behind a headlight or even under the vehicle somewhere. The odd time the exhaust will poke out of a hole in the front fender, but for the most part nowadays, street speed equipment looks pretty plain.
The argument can be made that the stealthy stuff of today is actually faster than the outrageous showmanship of yesterday, and that’s something that I can’t dispute. Sometimes it’s not solely about speed, though, as there’s certain visual showmanship that people like. If that weren’t true, there’s no way to explain the insane popularity of the tuner cars two decades ago. With some hole saw weight reduction, some of those loud little Hondas could have been a lot faster, too.
Have a question or comment for Kelly? Post it at lmtimes.ca/kirk
