(slow piano music)
- So, normally I wouldn't find myself
lying underneath the belly of a car.
However this is no ordinary car.
Now what I mean it's not ordinary, well lets just go through
a couple of things that I'm staring at right now.
There are two big, 72 millimeter
Turbonetics turbochargers behind the rear axle.
There's a big Dana 60 back there.
There's a custom 4Link suspension, there are ride
height sensors, there's a gear vendor over drive unit,
and everything under this 1966 Plymouth Belvedere,
well, is not stock anymore.
What you are looking at is quite possibly the greatest
Plymouth Belvedere ever made.
I think I'm going to lay here for a few more minutes
though because, this is pretty impressive.
- [Narrator] South of Chicago, is the small
incorporated village of Manteno, Illinois.
Its population is under 10 thousand people.
And for the most part, it's pretty quiet.
The best kept secret in Manteno, well that would be
Rad Rides by Troy.
And for over two decades, Troy Trepanier and his crew
have turned out some of the most amazing coach built
hot rods the world has ever seen.
There is nothing like watching true craftsmen at work.
This is where pride and design meet functionality,
and build quality.
Simply building a car is one thing,
but crafting an automobile?
Well that's something entirely different.
Thankfully, we have the keys to one of them.
(light airy music)
- So, it's quite possible
that if you were born after the year 2000,
you don't even know who Plymouth was.
You see, they're a division of the Chrysler corporation
that bit the bullet back in 1999, after producing
such quality products as the Plymouth Acclaim, the Breeze,
and of course, the mighty Neon!
However, if you're old like me, you remember
the heyday of the Plymouth division, the Plymouth
that made such cars as the Hemi 'Cuda, the GTX,
and of course the winged wonder Superbird.
One model that you may have overlooked though,
are the B-body Belvederes
that were produced between 1966 and 1967.
Now, these slam sided B-bodies were more of, like,
your grandmother's car than any type of hot rod.
However, if you optioned one out with a 426 Hemi,
you just ordered one of the baddest sleeper cars
ever produced.
Now let's go over some famous Belvederes, shall we?
The 1st one, the 1967 Plymouth Belvedere
known as the Silver Bullet.
Now this car started out as a development car for Chrysler,
and it morphed into what would become
one of the baddest most well known street racers
in the Detroit area.
Number two, Christine, the 1958 Plymouth Fury,
that was created by Stephen King,
for Christine, his novel and the movie.
Now, I say Plymouth Fury, because Fury was a submodel
of the Belvedere, but as a trim package.
The 3rd car, the 1966/1977 Plymouth Belvedere,
that was raced by Richard Petty in Nascar.
Now in 1966, he won the Daytona 500 with that car,
that's bad ass!
Then in 1967, Petty went on to win
27 out of 48 races,
making that specific car the most winning car
in Nascar history.
The 4th one, you might not know about it,
until right now, is this car, the 1966 Plymouth Belvedere
built by David Meyer.
- When I was 16, and I was really wanting my 1st car
and my mom did not want me to get a car at all,
and I wanted a 1st gen Camaro,
and my dad said absolutely not,
if you're going to get a car
you're going to get
"One you can build on."
- First time I had an encounter
with a Belvedere was, a neighbour of ours
had just bought one when we were in high school
and he gave me a ride in it,
and he kicked the tires loose at 60 miles an hour
goin' down the road,
that just convinced me at that point that this was a car
you could do something with.
- So we came across a '66 Plymouth Belvedere
in a parking lot of a muffler shop,
and the guy wanted $200 for it, so, bought that on the spot,
and drove it home, and my dad convinced my mom
that would be an okay father, son, project car.
And dad calls me up one day and says, "You know, I think I'm
"going to fix up your old Belvedere again
"so I can take it to car shows".
And I said, dad, if we're going to do that,
let's start with a real Hemi car this time.
So I went on a search for a Hemi car on eBay
and found this one in North Carolina.
This one had been rolled in 1972,
and the 2nd owner of the car is the one who rolled it.
And he yanked the Hemi, and the transmission,
and the rear end out of it, and put it all in a 318 car
and left the rest of it parked underneath a pine tree.
It is a real Hemi car.
It had the certa card there, it had the fender tag,
it had the VIN, even found what's left of the build sheet
underneath the seat, and sent all that in to Galen Govier,
and had it documented, and yeah, it's a real Hemi car.
(engine revving loudly)
- Under the hood we have a 526 cubic inch Hemi.
On motor it probably makes 700 horsepower,
and 700 pound feet of torque.
But what you're not seeing
are the twin 72 millimeter Turbonetics turbos
that are mounted behind the rear axle
that push this thing to, well,
a solid 1600 horsepower,
at 20 pounds of boost.
Whoo hoo, it's so fast! (laughs)
(engine roaring)
This car is on a whole other level.
This was built by Rad Rods by Troy,
and wholly crap if he didn't hit the friggin' thing
out of the park, this thing is a riot!
- Well, when the Belvedere project started,
David came to us, and kind of talked about it,
and David had a agenda list of what he wanted to achieve
with the car, and he told me the story about driving one
like that to school and him and his dad worked on it
and all that, and I'm thinkin' that's cool,
and he had a Viper, I knew that, and wanting to go nines
and go 200, and I'm like okay,
and I'm like, well David, why don't we tub the thing.
"No I don't want to tub it", I'm like okay, allright,
with an 8 inch wheel, you know,
and how about we hammer it on the ground
that's the best thing you can do aerodynamically,
I've been in a wind tunnel a lot,
"No, we don't want it too low, we don't want to give it away".
I'm like, okay.
So, you're like, okay, hmm, allright.
So it made it a taller order, you know,
but we love challenges.
We want to do the things here that nobody else wants to do.
We create our own problems, but we want to solve problems.
And like any of them that really evolved,
David's very in order, and he's an engineer.
He came with a spreadsheet of the car,
and I'm like, you know,
you might as well wipe your ass with that thing
because (laughs) that's way over my head.
You know, one thing changes this whole side
of the spreadsheet, so that's where we kind of say
you got to let the car tell you what it wants a little,
but I tell people that sometimes
and if they're not into cars, they're like,
"I don't think you really get it", you know.
If you start with a rendering and it's clearcut,
we talked a little, you get too zoned in on that
and you miss the car, I think.
You got to get into it, like a lot of them
we'd build the car, put it down on the ground the 1st time
and then really see,
and then it really starts telling you what it wants.
- Now, why did David Meyer, the owner,
why did he build this machine?
Well, pretty simple answer, actually,
it's three different answers.
David wanted a car that would
run under 10 seconds in the 1/4 mile.
He achieved that because he ran 9.70,
not a bid deal, right?
But he also wanted a car
that he could run a thousand or two thousand miles,
and equipped, doing Hot Rod Drag Week,
or running on the Power Tour.
Boom, achieved that too, already done that!
And three, he wanted a car that would blitz
the standing mile at over 200 miles an hour.
He did that too.
This car went 208 in the standing mile.
(engine roaring)
526 cubic Hemi and I'm running at 180 degrees
on the thermostat right now.
And it drives beautifully!
(laughing as engine roars)
This car has a trailer hitch on it,
that's located behind the licence plate.
And that trailer hitch serves two purposes:
one, obviously tows a trailer when he goes on Drag Week
and stuff like that;
and two, it holds the parachute.
This lever right here, this big pull lever right here,
that says parachute, is awesome.
(high pitch engine roaring)
- With me in it and a full tank of gas,
it weighs 4895 pounds.
So it's definitely not a lightweight car,
which again, goes to the whole purpose build of the car,
it wasn't built to only be a drag race car.
If it was we would have done a lot of things differently.
It's got the steel hood off
my '66 Belvedere from high school on there.
It's got steel bumpers on it.
The only things that we've done
to try to take weight out of the car, really,
are the aluminum block, aluminum heads,
and that was more for weight distribution
rather than absolute weight reduction.
It' got over 400 pounds of Dynamat sound deadening material.
It wasn't made to only be a drag car.
It's made to be a nice comfortable street cruiser
that also does under 10 seconds,
we're running 9.73 with it at 150 miles an hour
on Drag Week, and it hits 208 miles an hour
in the standing mile.
- Top speed, we were trying to figure this out,
between the gearing of the car
and the power that it puts out,
we're thinking top speed is somewhere in the neighborhood of
oh
252 to 257, around there.
That's fast!
(engine roaring)
(laughing uncontrollably)
Look at the interior of this car.
Look at the fit and the finish.
Look at the quality of the leather.
Look at the quality of the door panels
and the center console.
Look at the seams and the gaps.
Look at how the roll cage has been integrated
into the car, in such a way that, from the outside,
you really don't even see it unless
you see the crossbar in the back.
In my rear view mirror I have a backup camera
and navigation.
He kills it with this car.
He built what I am going to call, a masterpiece.
The execution that Troy did in this car
is above and beyond, I think,
any muscle car that I've driven to date.
I have been in very few cars
that make fun of you,
and this car makes fun of you.
This car basically looks at you and goes,
"You don't have it, you don't have the balls
"to do what I'm built to do!"
and you're basically like, well I kind of have the balls,
and the car goes, "No you don't", and you're like
well I wish I had the balls, and the car goes,
"I wish you did too,
"because you're just kind of wasting my potential."
Now, David, 208,
so what do you say, except for..
(slow ethereal music)
♫ Days go by
♫ Feel like I
if you liked this episode of The House
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I wanted to build a car that reminded
me of the cars that were on the road
when I was a kid makes Mike feel like a kid
when he gets in this car he's like dude I'm 16 I am 16 years old you ask any guy who build a car that didn't
want some since of acknowledge that dude that is freaking bad ass
he's lying each new episode of The House
of Muscle premieres exclusively on Motor
Trend On Demand