The Original Musclecar (Circa 2006)
Technical marvels cruise, too!
Text and Photos by Ro McGonegal

Jack and Connie Mathews had a yen. They wanted to marry classic sheetmetal with modern technology. They had a straight 1964 GTO. They found a wrecked 2004 GTO. They wanted to put Corvette suspension underneath it all. Time Machines in Hudson, FL, knew how to do it. Some funny stuff happened along the way.
The convertible body is one of 6,644 produced in ’64, the GTO’s inaugural year. In the day, if you were serious about performance, you got something with a fixed roof. Without one, a convertible body was as about as rigid as a strand of spaghetti, much too flimsy for a big power injection. But the Mathews’ were interested in cruising as the first rule rather than falling for the road-burner persona. They wanted a stock drivetrain underneath a thoroughly razzed-out interior.
What they got was a sweetheart of driver—automatic tranny, torquey V8, vette suspension at every corner, wide-ass brakes, and big, glistening American Torq-Thrust wheels to cement the image all around. Indeed, the engine ticks over with barely a yawn and the slushbox shifts up all quiet (but firm) like an ordinary car. The only guff it spits comes out of the Flowmaster exhaust pipes. Did the Mathews’ get what they were after? It would seem so. The GTO won Best Paint and Best Full Custom at the Atlanta World of Wheels in the spring of ’06. They liked that very much but all they really wanted to do was go for drive down the road.