Heather Rende of Crystal, Minn., bought her ‘74 Volkswagen Super Beetle on a whim in 2008 for the sole purpose of turning it into a show car. 

The champagne colored bug was Rende’s first project car. She had no background or experience in cars, but she found all of that and more in the Frankensteiners Car Club, which she joined shortly after buying the Beetle. The club was always on the lookout for projects, Rende said, and offered to help her give the VW a makeover.

The project began in the spring of 2008 and in less than a month of work in the club’s garage, the car was turned into a head-turning hot rod. The mods:

Satin black paint with bright pink flames and green pin striping, nerf bars in place of the bumpers, shaved and relocated front blinkers, modified taillights including a maltese cross taillight, a stinger pipe, headlight eyebrows, new rocker panels and running boards, a two-inch front drop and painted wheels. The black and pink vinyl interior took longer to complete; it was fully installed after about a year. The transmission and carb have also been replaced since the build.

“I chose how it would look,” Rende said. “However, the work was a team effort. Whoever had the talent worked on it. I did not work on it. Just helped where I could.”

Rende said the Beetle sees plenty of action during show season. She said it’s a blast to drive and draws attention everywhere.

“Lot’s of smiles,” she said. “As you can imagine, girls love it!’

If you make it out to Elko Speedway this summer, keep an eye out for Jason Novak’s number 88 Thunder Car, which is sporting the Minnesota Motorhead logo.

Novak, from Farmington, is a good friend who pasted this website’s moniker on the side of his car for next to nothing. It’s a sponsorship that pays in moral support, while his other sponsor, the Farmington NAPA store, does the real work of keeping him and other local racers on the track with parts specials. Still, it’s pretty cool to see Minnesota Motorhead lapping the 3/8-mile oval, so here’s a little background on the guy behind the wheel. 

Novak has been racing in the Power Stock and Thunder Car divisions since 2002. His current car started out as a run-of-the-mill ‘85 Oldsmobile Cutlass destined for the scrap heap. He and some friends gutted it and turned it into a race car for the 2004 season and Novak raced it again in 2005. After that, the car was gradually disassembled and completely rebuilt. This year is its first appearance since the rebuild.

The home-built car is heavily fabricated, from the intense network of roll cage bars to the aluminum interior, which features custom bead-rolled flames on the dash. Even the shifter, a steel rod topped with a rocker arm that a pushrod blew through during a race last year, is home made. After leading much of that race, Novak finished second on seven cylinders.

“I call it my cruel reminder to, no matter where you are on the track, to shut the engine down when there is a wicked noise and you’re all of a sudden running on seven cylinders,” he said. “I was lucky to not have a complete engine failure out of that one.”

Novak is a mechanic by day, and said he learned metal fabrication on his own over time. His tool arsenal includes tin snips, a bead roller, a welder and other simple tools.

“Nothing fancy in my garage–no sheet metal brakes, tubing notchers or anything else that makes that stuff easy,” Novak said.

He also sprayed the car’s silver paint himself and gave it a clearcoat to boot.

Under the hood is a 350 making close to 400 hp on 110 octane, despite the use of stock exhaust manifolds and a two-barrel carb. Compression is a healthy 10.8:1 and the engine features a .500 lift cam. It sends power to the wheels through a Powerglide transmission, run in low, and 3:42:1 gears.

Novak’s first race of the season, in late May, was cut short by overheating issues, but he finished sixth out of 16 in the feature race the next weekend and said with a few more suspension and chassis tweaks, the car “should be pretty damn fast.”

Since Elko’s track is NASCAR sanctioned, a NASCAR license is required and drivers do get paid depending on where they finish. But Novak said it’s not nearly enough to cover the time and expense of building and racing a car and that’s not why he does it.

“Racing, much like the car show scene, is full of people with passion for what they do,” he said. “I have met a lot of people, made a lot of friends doing it, and always enjoy going to the race tracks in Minnesota and Wisconsin. I would rather go to any short track in the country over a big NASCAR race any day.”

The Midwest Mopars club is planning a new addition to its increasingly popular Mopars in the Park show this year—an attempt at setting a Guinness world record for the largest parade of LC platform Dodge Challengers.

That means the attempt is only open to the new version of Dodge’s famed muscle car, or Challengers made from 2008 to today. Mopar will lead the parade with a mystery guest driving a special Challenger, according to the Midwest Mopars website. The driver’s name won’t be released before the event, so you’ll have to be there to find out who it is.

All LC Challenger owners are invited to participate in the record attempt, which will take place June 4, the first of the show’s two days. If you want to join the group, use class code 4200 on the registration form.

This year’s show will also feature a display dedicated to 1971 Mopars, a swap meet, a burnout contest, a model contest and more. All Mopar makes and models are welcome to participate in the event, which will again be at the Dakota County Fairgrounds in Farmington. To register, or for more information, click here.

With temperatures hovering in the 30s and the windchill making it feel even colder, spring seemed to be missing from the Spring Extravaganza Car Show and Swap Meet May 1 at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds, but the cars weren’t.

Hundreds of classics, customs, rods and muscle cars showed up for the 24th annual event, sponsored by the Gopher State Chapter of the Buick Club of America, and hundreds of spectators braved the cold to check out one of the first large shows of the season. The swap meet was also a big draw and folks could be seen throughout the day toting car parts and other finds.

Many show participants huddled in their vehicles, rolling down windows to chat with spectators. Only a few car owners, such as Dave Teskey, toughed out the cold in lawn chairs.

“All the die-hard car guys are here today,” said Teskey, who sat in a winter parka behind his 1960 Plymouth Fury.

If you opted to stay indoors May 1, check out the photo gallery for coverage of the scene.

If you’re a fan of cruising to Porky’s on a nice summer Saturday night for a burger and a little car culture, hopefully you got in a few runs last year, because you won’t get the opportunity again.

Porky’s closed abruptly April 3, days after ownership announced the property’s impending sale to neighboring Episcopal Homes. The Central Corridor light rail project on University Avenue contributed to already slow sales at the restaurant, prompting the sale, according to numerous news reports.

But the construction didn’t stop customers, many of them auto enthusiasts, from lining up throughout the restaurant’s last weekend.

For many in the Twin Cities car community, the closure is a devastating loss. Porky’s, which opened in 1953, was more than a place to get great burgers and onion rings. It was a place that on any given Saturday, if the weather was nice, car buffs of all ages and backgrounds could be found mingling among raised hoods, enjoying their hobby. It was the central hub of the University Avenue cruising circuit; the place to park, chat and gawk for a bit before getting behind the wheel for another lap.

Porky’s was the best place to be at night during Back to the ’50s and the Car Craft Summer Nationals. When the shows let out, Porky’s and the stretch of University Avenue in front of it transformed into another show, often complete with smokey burnouts.

University Avenue without Porky’s is hard to imagine, but it’s now a reality. And so is the massive construction project outside the restaurant’s shuddered doors. In a few years, trains will be sharing the roadway with the cars that have dominated it for decades.

When the dust finally settles on University, it might not be the cruising destination it is today. The owners of Porky’s might have recognized that. But Twin Cities auto enthusiasts are still going to pull out their cars on a warm Saturday night and find a place to cruise. Where will you go?

The Minnesota car community recently lost one of its finest. Pete Emeott, a longtime Minnesota Street Rod Association member, talented car builder and friend to anyone he met, died March 8 in hospice care at his home in St. Paul. He had been battling a rare form of lung cancer for a couple of years. He was 60.

I had the pleasure of meeting Pete on the Hot Rod Power Tour in 2008, after spotting his gorgeous 1970 rag-top Monte Carlo. That car was the first to be featured on this site (see the story here), and he even let me get behind the wheel. We kept in touch afterward, with Pete always taking the time to track me down at area car shows to say hello.

Pete was one of the car-craziest people I’ve ever known. At the time of the Monte Carlo story, he said he had owned 154 vehicles throughout his life and he had plans for more. His project of the moment was crossing a ‘40 Chevy and a ‘91 Mazda Miata. He was a talented car crafter who took a ton of pride in his work and enjoyed driving his vehicles.

But anyone who knew Pete will tell you that there was much more to his life than cars. Friends and family were of the utmost importance to him and, during the brief time I knew him, they were a common topic of conversation.

Pete loved to talk and make people laugh, he was always good for a wisecrack and he was friendly and helpful to everyone. Once you met Pete, you were his friend. That’s just the way it was.

“Thanks to all for being my friend whether you want to be or not,” he wrote in an e-mail to friends and family on Jan. 31.

Many of you knew Pete much better than I did. Please feel free to share your memories in the comments section below.

For all these reasons, it was my engine of choice when I decided way back in 2003 that my ‘84 Monte Carlo SS needed a little more oomph than the stock 190 hp 305 could offer. I was in college, on a shoestring budget and willing to space out my purchases. It took a bit longer than expected, but I finally completed the swap last spring, thanks in large part to Shakopee-based engine builder Steve Vermeer and my dad, shown yanking the 305 in the photo above.

The new engine is a 350 that was already built and bored .030 over when I bought it dirt cheap from a friend six years ago. I was shocked to find out that that friend, a colleague at my college newspaper named Nate Denay, died in a canoe accident last April, one day after I started the engine for the first time.

Nate was planning to put the engine in a Mazda for the shock factor, but didn’t get around to finishing the project. He hauled it all the way from Michigan in the back of a tiny Subaru wagon before I picked it up. He never started it, sadly. I wish he could have seen it run, even though it’s not quite what it was when I bought it.

My dad and I tore everything apart after the purchase to see what we had to work with and what we might need to buy to meet my modest goal of 400 hp. We found what Nate said we would: a four-bolt-main block from a ’70s truck, a mystery-brand cam with 222/236 duration and .466/.501 lift at .050, Speed Pro flat-top pistons, stiffer aftermarket valve springs and pretty much stock everything else.

The engine came with TBI “swirl port” heads and a Weiand single-plane intake. After a little research, I decided to ditch the heads for a used set of iron Vortecs, which I found on Craigslist along with a pair of valve covers. I sold the old intake and bought an Edelbrock air-gap intake.

Last winter, after accumulating myriad other parts and changing my mind about stuff a million times, I decided it was time to get the engine back together and in my car. To make sure it was done right, I sent everything to Vermeer, who has spent decades building high-performance engines of just about every make imaginable.

Topped with a 600 cfm Holley carb and MSD distributor, the engine made 417 hp at 6,100 rpm and 386 lb-ft of torque at 4,300 rpm on Vermeer’s dyno. It’s exactly what I was hoping for, built with mostly used parts that either came with the engine or were found online.

My dad and I spent a couple months worth of weekends swapping the old engine, which is still pristine with about 35,000 miles on it, with the new one. We cleaned and painted everything along the way, which added some time, but made a huge difference visually.

I put about 1,000 miles on the car last summer and I couldn’t be happier with it, though it still needs a little fine tuning. It feels much faster and I can’t wait to get it to a track. During the 2009 Hot Rod Power Tour, the car ran 16 seconds flat at 85 mph. I think it’ll do much better now, though a new problem has emerged: traction.

The engine is backed with a 700R4 transmission and a 2,200 stall converter and the car has its stock 3.42 gears with no posi. That will change when I have the funds. Until then, I’ll enjoy smoking one wheel at a time.

If you’ve ever traveled Lake Superior’s North Shore to Bluefin Bay resort in Tofte, Minn., you’ve stayed across the street from arguably one of the best junkyards in the state for classic American iron.

Most people who visit the area are too busy soaking in the scenic lakeside to notice the vast collection of rusting relics stacked and scattered outside Cooter’s Auto Repair just on the other side of Highway 61. Some are from the past couple decades, but most are from the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s and some date back to the ’40s.

I first spotted Cooter’s a couple of years ago during a Valentine’s weekend excursion with my wife. Needless to say, exploring a frozen junkyard was not on the itinerary, so we made a quick pass through the place. I spoke briefly with owner Randy Nelson, he told his four-legged friend, Throttle, we were cool (the dog followed us everywhere, anyway) and we were off.

It’s hard to describe what a time warp this place is. Many of the cars still contained remnants of their last owners, such as decades-old maps and old soda cans faded as badly as the upholstery. Parts were everywhere – a pile of transmissions here, a shed full of engines there. It was beautiful chaos.

In this state, where salt sends many cars to premature deaths, places that boast as many intact classic vehicles as Cooter’s are a rarity. I stopped by the yard again in September of 2009 to get a few more photos. Nelson said then that his father, who started the business, had been thinking of clearing the place out a bit. There is a crusher on site, but Nelson, who had several show-car nice muscle cars parked outside his shop,  said they don’t wreck the good stuff.

I’m hoping to eventually get back to Cooter’s for a longer conversation with Nelson about how the North Shore’s hidden auto graveyard came to be and what the future holds for the place. There are plenty of cars worth saving in there.

Included here are photos from both my visits to the yard.

Mark Brandow was kind enough to take me on a tour of his business, Quality Coaches at 20 W. 38th Street, which he founded in the ’70s and moved to it’s current location in 1985. Quality Coaches is a full-service shop for vehicles of all kinds, but Brandow’s specialty is British cars – he even lists the niche on his business card.

MGs, Morgans, Mini Coopers and the like are commonplace in Brandow’s shop. Almost all of them are in for restoration or repair of some kind, though Brandow treats them as his own.

“All of these cars have a history and a story and some of them are very close to people’s hearts,” he said.

Brandow shared some of those stories and took me for my first ride in a British speed machine – a V8-powered ‘98 Morgan roadster that had no trouble smashing me against the seat back during a full-throttle launch onto I-35W.

Check out the photos for a glimpse inside Quality Coaches, then go see it for yourself. For more info, visit http://www.quality-coaches.com.

“He said, ‘Do you like street rodding?’ And I said, ‘Is that a band?’ I had no idea,” Doreen recalled.

That answer didn’t seem to bother Doug too much, since he and Doreen were married in July the next year. Two decades later, Doreen has gone to more car cruises and shows than she probably ever could have imagined. Her husband, who happens to be pretty handy with machines of the four-wheeled variety, even built her an LS2-powered ‘67 Camaro so she could get in on the action first-hand.

You see, Doug is the founder, owner and sole employee of a quaint, but busy rod shop that shares his name. Doug’s Rod Garage is actually an offshoot of his personal garage, attached to his house in Spring Lake Park. And it’s seen a lot of top notch cars – 145 of them as of last summer – during its roughly eight years of business. Doug does pretty much anything and everything you could want, from body work to interiors to engines and so on.

His slammed and sliced ‘39 Chevrolet Truck, the Minnesota Street Rod Association’s Street Rod of the Year in 2001, is his calling card that jump-started the business. Doug bought the Camaro just before customers started crowding his shop. He thought he needed a project.

“I had it seven years and it made a real nice shelf in my garage for a lot of years,” Doug said. “I used to put stuff on it. It was something that in my spare time I thought I would work on. I didn’t have that much spare time it seemed like.”

Why a Camaro? Well, it’s not because Doreen wanted one, as romantic as that might make this story. Doug did want to build her a car that was safe, dependable, but still cool. He actually grew fond of a ‘67 Camaro in high school (he graduated in ‘70) when an older classmate had one with a 396.

“It was just a cool car, I thought,” Doug said. “But I was more in to street rods. Back then I had a Model A coupe that was my first street rod. I never really thought about having a Camaro.”

Doug was working at Roger’s Rod & Customs in East Bethel when he heard about the ‘67 he would eventually buy. A guy came in to tow a junk car and asked Doug if he knew of anyone interested in an early Camaro. Doug said no, but went to check out the car, located in Columbia Heights.

It was white, rusty and powered by a wheezy 305. It had a 10-bolt rear and a four speed. Doug later found that it was originally a red on red SS with a black vinyl top, a 350 and a 12-bolt. The four-speed was the only original piece left.

He ended up driving it home, where he started the disassembly. He replaced the floor pan, trunk pan, both front fenders, the left rear quarter panel and part of the right.

Piece by piece, he chipped away at the project, between the car-show circuit in the summer and his steady flow of work projects. Doug originally wanted to make it a 383-stroker car, but a friend sent him in another direction.

“A friend of mine said, ‘You know Doug, they haven’t made a carbureted engine for 25 years,’” Doug said. “I said, ‘What’s your point?’ He said ‘you know what, you have a business, why don’t you move forward, and he had a good point.”

Doug ordered a 410hp LS2 from Turn Key Engine Supply thinking he’d learn a thing or two about the engines and boost his resume. Turned out the engine was so complete it only took five wires to hook up and it was ready to go.

With the engine in, the body work done, and the undercarriage sealed, gravel-guarded and painted, Doug brought the car to Unique Body and Paint in Blaine for the final spray. Since he had leftover paint, the color is the same GM white he used on his truck.

The Camaro also got a T5 five-speed manual transmission mated to a Hurst shifter, which Doug notched and bent slightly so it wouldn’t hit the dash in first gear. Out back is a 10-bolt (Doug said he doesn’t plan to race this car) with 3.55 gears and posi.

A Hotchkis sway bar, drop spindles and lowering springs up front and multi-leaf springs in back round out the suspension and the brakes are still a disc-drum combo, with 11-inch rotors in front. The car rides on 17-inch Billet Specialties wheels – six-inches wide up front and eight in back – wrapped in 50-series rubber.

A new dual exhaust system flows through Flowmaster 40-series mufflers. The engine came with full-length Hooker headers.

The red interior is also all new. Doug ordered it as a kit and installed it himself. The red and green gauges are new, too, and are the same size as stock.

Camaro fans will notice this car has some other subtle exterior differences from its stock brethren. The door handles are shaved, the windshield edges are rounded, the bumpers have been smoothed and pushed closer to the body and the gas cap has been replaced with a remote-controlled door.

“I decided to make it so it was a little different,” Doug said.

He did so under the hood, too, with a smooth firewall, custom engine and radiator covers and a wiper motor hidden in the fender.

Doug finished the car last spring and put on 1,400 miles by the end of July. It’ll get 22 mpg cruising at 75 mph down the freeway, he said.

Doreen hadn’t had much time behind the wheel, but planned to enjoy her new toy.

“I want him to put the first scratch on it,” she said.

If 20 years with Doug hasn’t been enough, maybe the car will help her get a handle on this whole street rodding thing.