You're right in my backyard :thumbsup:

We'll be opening a showroom in Irvington, NY - literally right on the Hudson. I live in South Salem. Cars and engineering are all being done in Canada, but we'll have some serious iron here. Showroom should be open in May or June.

John Buscema
XV Motorsports

That's great news. Now I'm really looking forward to more from Dream Car Garage. It sounds like you're going to take a street car to the next level. What a great time to be a g-machine enthusiast.

You can tell Peter and Tom that they have a lot of fans on Lateral-g. :thumbsup:

This is just great. I saw the show today and loved it. I look forward to seeing this come together.
W.

Well if its of any help, the first production car we are building is a 70 Challenger, set up to look like a 70 Challenger T/A. It will have a worked normally aspirated 6.1 Hemi w/ functional hood scoop, 6-speed T-56, upgraded 3.90 8-3/4 rear w/ torsen type diff, our Level II suspension, Level II brakes, heated/power leather Recaros w/ harnesses, custom interior and dash, real three piece forged aluminum 18" wheels w/ black anodized centers and polished lips and a bunch more.

This one will also have a roll bar as it will get thrashed by the magazines as well.

The next two builds will be a convertibles 71 Challenger and a hardtop Cuda, both will get functional shaker hoods. After that we are doing a 68 Charger, which will be the first car we do with a supercharged 6.1 Hemi. We are doing a twin screw supercharger kit for the 6.1. Supercharger will sit on an intake with integrated air-to-water intercooler. The air to water intercooler will alow easy packaging in almost any vehicle.

We already have a (normally aspirated) single plane four barrel EFI intake well underway for the 6.1 Hemi. Was designed in CAD and then a prototype made using Stereo Lithography. Stereo Lithography basically takes the CAD data and makes a prototype part building it out of resin layer by layer - almost like a three dimmensional printer. The prototype is already bolted on a 6.1 Hemi on an engine dyno waiting to be tested and run with different cam and header packages. See the pics below and you can see how the intake has come along.

The intake was done partly so we could run functional shaker hoods and scoops and we really didn't want to run the factory plastic tuned runner intake w/ a cone filter - we thought these cars would look much better with a more period correct four barrel air cleaner type setup and we really wanted to have the factory scoops and shakers be functional. Dream Car also filmed this including the intake being made on the Stereo Lithography machine.

John Buscema
XV Motorsports

I've seen that resin prototyping on TV before. Way cool stuff. I like that you want to keep a somewhat period correct look under the hoods of these cars. It's a nice blend of old school aesthetics/character and modern technology.

This is great. I'm just across the Hudson River (almost)! Welcome!

Just wanted to give you guys the times the Dream Car Garage shows air each week:

Wed. 7:00 PM
Thu 7:00 AM
Sat 9:30 AM
Sun 10:00 PM
Sun 3:00 AM

All times are EST

Its on Speed and there will be a segment on each episode of the show covering the development/engineering of our cars, including the build and track testing of our first production car, which will look like a 70 Challenger T/A. It will be compared on track to an original survivor T/A, one of the best handling cars of its day.

John Buscema
XV Motorsports
www.xvmotorsports.com

Your timing is perfect for me..... I just bought a 70 Barracuda project car about 3 months ago. I havent ripped into it yet, but was planning on the full Pro-touring adventure.

I've been researching all my options and there are only a few companies doing that stuff right now, but I know of several others that are also in the developement stage of this kind of stuff.

For right now at least, I'm most interested in the Level II suspension stuff. Not sure on motor plans right now.... would love to do a Hemi, but possiblly a 440. Either one is going to be turbo or supercharged.

So much better to have options....

John... any chance I can get more details about costs etc ??? The website info is fairly superficial... you can PM me or email if you'd rather discuss it privately.

And I dont get Speed Channel !!!! The one channel I wish I had.....

ned
Manteca, CA

Ned,

Bummer you don't get Speed! They are filming the entire development and engineering process for our cars and will be showing the tools and techniques we're using. There will also be some of the engineers explaining what these things are and how they are used. It was a really good timing thing that they were able to get this when it is being done up front. Anyway...

I'm about three weeks away from having five sets of prototype Level II suspension components. Once we have them in hand I will post some pics here for you guys. It will still be a while on pricing as we are still a bit off on getting production prices for making these in quantity. We are also exploring different manufacturing methods for some of them to have them produced as cost effectively as they can.

I won't speak to what else is out there or what others are doing, but I think if you look in detail on how our suspension is being engineered, I don't think anyone else has done aftermarket products to the level of engineering and testing we have, either for new or old cars. If you look at the development process of the suspension on our web site, click on the steps and it has detailed descriptions of what each of these are.

The four post testing is an integral part of the suspension development. I believe there are only two of these facilities in North America. I can't name names, but OE manufacturers use this facility for some of their high performance suspension development and competition vehicles. In addition professional race teams use it to set their cars up. It is literallly F1, IRL, Champ, Grand AM and NASCAR that do this. I was told that teams have taken fresh built cars, set them up on the four post and won the following wekend without having had time to do any real track testing.

When we bring the cars back for dialing in on four post, we have a shock dyno, a shock engineer and a set of rebuildable shocks on hand to try different combinations to optimize the setup based upon computer models derived from data collected on each run. Spring rates are also changed in this process. How precise is this - well it gets dialed in for the specific tires we are running as they each have different qualities in terms of stiffness and inherent spring rate. We also did this with ballast on board to simulate the driver and ballast to simulate different engine packages - i.e. big blocks.

The suspension development software used for modeling the geometry etc., is the same package the OE's use. I was shown demos of complete vehicles running on virtual road courses or slaloms courses, with the software learning to drive the vehicle better on each lap. That is used to validate the design as well as determine spring rates, sway bar sizes, base damping etc. We have also had them run models to ensure the components designed are strong enough for the intended application - for example our K-Member design was evaluated for impact and tearout loads for the lower control arms - and we will beat the crap out of it at the track during testing as well.

We also did full torsion tests on the car, before and after we made chassis stiffening components and this multiple times to optimize that as well. This is an evaluation of the torsional rigidity of the vehicle chassis itself.

The four post data and the torsion data gets compared against known performance vehicles so we can be sure we are in the target zone relative to the class of vehicles we want to be in with. 4-post tests were plotted against 250 production vehicles for comparison.

After all of this we track test the cars to make sure we are happy and validate what the models show. At the track we have a shock engineer and shock dyno and go through the same process as with the four post to dial it in too our desired level of balance between pure track performance, and comfort for the street.

You have no idea how fortunate we are that we got access to this level of technology and expertise. Best of all, the guys doing this think it is the coolest project and were totally digging the cars - as opposed to the race cars and such they typically work on, which I was really surprised by.

So, I will leave it to you to evaluate that process versus how others develop and test their products. I 'think' we are taking this to a level that has never been done before in the aftermarket, especially for cars of this vintage. If the guys who do all of this for a living really are amongst the best at what they do, I am pretty confident that our setup for these vehicles will be about as good as it can be, given the state of technology available today.

One thing that has been re-emphasized over and over through this process, is that the best performance is driven by the quality of the dial in on the dampers - and obviously everything has to all be matched to work together - so dampers relative to the rest of the setup. Damper technology has come a very long way and the guys we are using are amongst the top of that game.

Brakes are also being designed specifically for the cars - not off the shelf slap em on and call it great. The deal with that is getting proper front to rear balance using simulation and testing. That gets dialed in by sizing the caliper pistons to the specific application, again running models and then validating them on the track.

FWIW, my philosophy on all of this, is that at the end of the day we are doing this with best that is available and from my perspective we are REALLY trying to do it the right/best (choose your word) way. As much as we can, it's all the real deal.

One last thought on this setup -it's all being done in aluminum to lighten everything up: upper/lower control arms, front spindles, K-member, rack(no big deal on that one), rear lower links, rear upper link and the panhard bar. We also chose the new Hemi because it is very light. If you really want your car to handle, irrespective of what suspension you run, I don't think a big-block is the way to go. I'll qualify that by saying I don't know what your overall performance objectives are. My head generally comes at this with a road race mentality.

The TV show really lets you take a look under the covers, and we've spent alot of time putting as much of this on our web site as well. From my perspective the value added in what we are doing is that it is all being professionally engineered using the best technology and tools available.

We're really trying to take this to another level - irrespective of doing it on Mopars. I don't expect that everyone will get it, but we're doing our best to make sure it is clear on what and how it is getting done, but I do think many will. At the end of the day, you guys will be the judge of whether or not we've succeded.

John Buscema
XV Motorsports
www.xvmotorsports.com

Hi John
Thanks for all the details. It sounds like quite the set-up and I look forward to seeing it.

My one comment/concern..... sounds like expensive stuff. Worth every penny I'm sure, but budget is always a concern with us average guys. My budget is higher than average but nothing compared to some of the guys around here. Developing and engineering this level of performance is expensive and I understand that, but hopefully the systems wont be a pipe dream for 99% of us.

I'd really like to do a modern Hemi, but availablility of perfrormance parts and cost are going to influence that too. Like I said before, no matter what I build I plan on going FI, either supercharged or turbo.

My overall theme is also road race type performance. Going in a straight line is so boring !!! I'll also admit that visual impact and some bragging rights are always a factor too...:)