My daily driver is an SUV but my fuck around car is a 86 Iroc Camaro that I bought for $900 with 150k miles. Bought a book on small blocks, rebuilt the whole motor with the help of a friend. Its putting out around 380hp right now but only cause I didn't know what the fuck I was doing when I started building it.

The Iroc was the best handling production car built in 1986 according to Car and Driver. Its got Four wheel disc brakes, and with some rims it will probably look pretty good. A friend of mine got a mint red 89 Trans Am with 76K miles for 2400. Same owner since 89, some old lady, reason she sold it was too low for her to get into now that she is old. They are a solid platform, just like the Fox Body, fairly modern and cheap.

Only downfall of the third gens is most have a 305, which you must immeadeatly throw in the garbage. GM makes a pre-machined 383 block you can get for about $750.

With a slightly different choice of parts you can easily squeze another 40hp out of the Car Craft setup for only about $600 more. Mainly another point of compression, slightly bigger carb, different rocker arms.

Saving up for my next motor right now, probably gonna spray the fuck out of the current one once build the new engine.

But for the most part Chevys are alot cheaper to build HP for, look at the engine masters build contest Hot Rod did. Top engine was a $13,000 chevy 355 making 640hp on pump gas running AFR heads, and all off the shelve parts. Second place was a $22,000 Ford motor with Australian heads, and a custom ground cam. The next 8 spots were 1 ford, 2 mopars and 5 chevys.

And by the way, in the Motor Trend convertable shoot out the Cobra convertable with 390 HP got beat by the Corvette convertible with 350hp by .1 in the quarter. Naturally aspirated with 40 less hp.