Remember back in the day when Streets of San Francisco, Rockford Files, Chips, The Fall Guy, and all the other great car chase TV Shows of the 70’s and 80’s used Dodge Coronets as police cars? They would lose hubcaps a lot if you remember right, and while they were good at being sideways around corners, it was clear that the stunt drivers were doing some pretty elaborate things to get those giant barges sliding. Well, you can image our surprise when we saw the video of this 1974 Dodge Coronet tearing up the autocross at the Street Machine and Muscle Car Nationals. According to the description, a late model Corvette had just finished a run and was only 4 tenths, .40, of a second quicker than the big Mopar. Whoever is wheeling it clearly knows what they are doing, because it isn’t pretty, but it sure is quicker than we expected.
That’s why we’ve chosen it for todays ACED: AutoCross Every Day video.
Remember, if you have video from the autocross that you think is worthy, SEND IT TO US! Email us a link at [email protected]!
Late B-Body Mopars (73 and later) were some pretty impressive handling cars for the era and certainly the best handling B-Bodies. While they mounted everything in lots of rubber to isolate NVH, they also improved geometry a ton as well as upped torsion, spring, and sway rates. The only thing that was “compromised” was the front shock length though it’s position was good. We ran several as street stockers and they handled much better than the Metric full size Chevys that made up most of the class.