Aren't the cars fantastic... - Thunder Road (1958) Discussion

[–] fbm72751 15 years ago

This was long before people starting stuffing Chevy 350's, computers, IFS (suspension), $5000 paint jobs, digital gauges and all the other modern crap that's on today's rods. If you had a flathead, Y block, Olds Rocket, etc, they simply souped them up and make them hot. Or if the car or truck had a Six, then maybe the owner would plant a Cadillac 331 or Buick Nailhead (322) in it,,,then that car really moved!! Yes, those cars were great and it didn't cost $30,000 to build one like now ( a part time job paying $1 an hour went a long way towards that in '57)

reply

[–] XLCH1000 15 years ago

Agreed..But you know the best part of watching this movie? Not a single foreign car in sight!
Wasnt too impressed with the soundtrack. The exhaust note(S)too often sounded like 4 cylinder sports cars. Hot rodders would more likely have straight pipes or maybe "Smitty" mufflers if they used any at all. But I can forgive that. It WAS the late fifties. They (the studio) used whatever they had, and figured that few people would bother to notice the difference.

reply

[–] fbm72751 8 years ago

Yeah I noticed those 4 cylinder exhaust sound effects too and that was bothersome. They should have done what TV series Highway Patrol did. They used no sound effects, but the actual sound of the engines running.

reply

[–] HotRodAl 14 years ago

Freakin' loved this movie! Saw it for the first time on the low budget THIS! channel. Best part of the flick for me was seeing the flathead with tri-power, nice touch. Mitchum wasn't so bad either.

reply

[–] ck1-5 13 years ago

I don't mean to spoil your fun, but if you take a closer look at the view under the hood of the '50/'51 Ford, the "flathead" is an OHV Y block Ford V8. I stopped the frame in order to verify what I suspected.

reply

[–] tdf5g 13 years ago

Those are Smithy mufflers, not Smittys.

reply

[–] Bush_Pilot 13 years ago

We used to simply call them glasspaks....... BTW, the reason some cars back then sounded kinda like jaquars or other sports cars is because the fad then if you had a hot six cylinder chevy or the like, you could split the manifold output so the front three cylinders went down one side and the back three down the other in dual exhaust. This caused harmonics like you only hear now a days in those old Jaguar sixes... a really sweet sound thru glasspaks..... ain't nothing like it gearing down.... even better than my harley with straight pipes..

Guns kill people, just like Spoons made Rosie O'Donnell fat.

reply

[–] tdf5g 12 years ago

The Smithy mufflers are not glasspacks. They are steelpacks.

reply

[–] paulr03 9 years ago

http://www.speedwaymotors.com/Smithys-Glasspack-Muffler-22-Inch-Body-2 -Inch-Inlet-Outlet,1703.html

reply

[–] tdf5g 9 years ago

Yep, that is the current version of them which is available today, which is packed with fiberglass.

Back in the day they were packed with a steel wool type material.

reply

[–] jondoe888 9 years ago

A bit OT, but today the Car Talk guys mentioned their younger days, driving through the long tunnel in Boston. They would step on it, speed up, then shut off the ignition. When they turned it back on, that pent-up fuel would light up the tailpipes, and create a hell of a bang. What a funny story. You can picture them laughing like buffoons, when doing it.
They didn't mention how many mufflers they blew off...

reply