Words: Tommy Parry Images: Kyle
There are a few ways to go retrofitting a muscle car for the demands of the modern road course. You can buy a junker, empty your wallet, go into debt and restore it with a slew of gleaming new goodies from the hottest resto shop. Or, if you’re wiser, connected and well-funded, you can go ahead and grab a Roush Fenway RK200 Road Course Chassis and layer your bodywork of choice on top of it. That’s one way to go.
There’s a bit of inspiration in the form of a classic Cyclone stock car poster hanging on Kyle’s garage wall, and with a few phone calls to the appropriate people, he found an ideal skin donor within a few days.
As he lived in Arizona, Kyle’s potential Cyclone bodies were, for the most part, rust-free. He lucked out with the particular body he bought; not a spot of rust could be found. That would be useful when Kyle had to mold the Cyclone’s panels to fit the tube-framed car sitting beside it. Thankfully, his amigo Jim was a talented metalworker and brought plenty of confidence to the build, in the form of his experience and a six-pack.
The motor, if anything, brought a sense of excitement to Kyle’s garage. The NASCAR-sourced Roush-Yates motor is a Cleveland-style SVO block, wears Yates C3 heads, uses an 870 cfm carburetor and is mated to a T101 gearbox. The transmission allows for flat, clutchless upshifts but requires some heel-toe and a dab of the leftmost pedal when downshifting. Plus, the gearbox was encased in magnesium. There’s plenty to like.
Another magnesium piece – the timing cover – didn’t fare as well. After the car sat in storage for years, a combination of acidic antifreeze and dissimilar metals ate into the magnesium and necessitated a new one – with new dry sump mounts.
Once it’d been returned from the dyno room, the figures were clear: 684 horsepower, 496 lb-ft of torque and an 8,200 rpm redline. Plenty of power – and probably a little more on top depending on the weather; those numbers were made in a dyno room on fire – 110*F!
Keeping the heft to a minimum took priority on Kyle’s to-do list, and he brought in a hired gun with thirty years of NASCAR to trim the unnecessary fat off the Cyclone’s panels. With heavy scraping and the removal of hinges, his friend Jay managed to cut up to 60% of the weight out of the hood.
Jay trimmed some more of the wheel wells without ruining the factory wheel lip openings, and soon the whole thing was set atop the frame. With the help of laser guidance and a sharp set of eyes, the metallic skeleton started to look like something roadworthy.
Perhaps the most impressive piece of metalwork involved blending the factory Mercury cowl area with the new cup car firewall. First, they set the ignition system to see if they had clearance, and it fit perfectly. Fortunately, most of it slotted in as if they were made for one another – it must’ve been fate.
Next went on the Aero front end conversion and a Cyclone spoiler. After that, with a coat of chassis grey and hot rod black, the car was starting to look downright menacing. Fortunately, this build is only getting started, and with a beginning this strong, half a modern NASCAR buried underneath those panels and some very talented metalworkers on hand, a terrifying stock car should be cruising Scottsdale’s streets very soon.
