Sometimes blog items come from my fertile brain and lots of other times they come from some sort of trigger that leads me into a search where I try to find the coolest bit of media on a particular thing. That’s how I became obsessed with IMSA Monzas today.  Now, you see in the title of the video that the car is a Dekon Monza and that’s significant because Dekon was the most successful builder of these cars in the 1970s. To have one of theirs is to have a good one, especially if you have it tuned up and absolutely roaring like the one being driven by Kiel Hogan at The Circuit Of The Americas below. How good were they? These cars won the IMSA GT championship in 1977/78/79. That’s success!

Located in Illinois, Dekon managed to get hooked up with GM and become the lead company on these vehicles. The Monza was the first car that GM ever designed using CADD software and by late 1974 the cars were showing up at Dekon for their modifications and there were LOTS. The company received complete cars and tore them down, not blank bodies in white which is pretty interesting. GM provided lots of technical assistance in the design of the chassis and suspension but all the work of implementing it went to Dekon.

Using a tube frame chassis and weighing in at about 2,400lbs it is no surprise that these things (once sorted) with their 600hp small block Chevy engines started eating Porsches like peanuts on the circuits around the country. Not get this. The cars were a $38,000 purchase in the 1970s. With inflation that’s $153,000 today. Even more impressive is that fully restored machines have fetched more than $250,000 on the market. People love these cars, they race these cars, and they still win in them at vintage events, etc.

This is some cool iron for sure!

Press play below to ride in a legit 1970s IMSA Monza – The sound is incredible!