Big trouble starts with small things. In Die Hard, it's just New York cop John McClane deciding to visit his estranged wife and family in Los Angeles over Christmas. In Romeo and Juliet, it's an ancient grudge between the Montagues and Capulets so trivial Shakespeare doesn't even tell us what it is. And for Jeff Mann, trouble started when he bought his '57 Chevy-or when he decided it would be cool to own a Hemi. Well, if it wasn't trouble when he decided to buy the engine or when he bought the car, it surely came the moment he decided to combine the two.

Today, Jeff is a successful motion-picture production designer; he's the guy who conjured up the secret underground command center in which Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines concluded, decided exactly what expensive stuff Mr. & Mrs. Smith would have in their home to destroy, and put together the team that built the Eleanor Mustangs in 2000's Gone in Sixty Seconds. But back in 1984, he was 19 and working as a mechanic on offshore boats in his native San Diego. And every day on his way to work, he drove past an oxidized blue '57 Bel Air coupe. There wasn't a "For Sale" sign in its window, it was very rough, and he didn't have a garage to put it in. But he found the owner, turned on the adolescent charm, took out a $2,400 loan at 26 percent interest, and bought it. "I was deluded," he recalls. "It was a pant load. The guy I bought it from had found it buried in an Oklahoma oil field."

So, shamelessly exploiting a relative's goodwill, he stored the '57 at a cousin's house in Point Loma, California, while more and more of his time and all his mechanical skills were put to work helping friends produce music videos until eventually he stopped wrenching on boats and began working in show business full time. And big-time show biz is in Los Angeles. So he moved. His career expanded while the old Chevy hibernated under an ever-growing mountain of Danchuk restoration parts ready for someday installation.

Jeff had just finished his first movie as art director (1993's Kalifornia, starring a then nearly unknown Brad Pitt) when he finally turned his attention to the '57. He even built a 327 small-block Chevy for the car. But, he says, "Even as I was building that engine, I was already bored by the idea of another '57 with a small-block in it. You know, bored like the rest of the western civilization."

One way to fight boredom in Southern California is to read The Recycler, where legions advertise their junk hoping to find buyers who'll consider it treasure. "I saw an ad in there that said "'58 Chrysler New Yorker, $500, runs good,"and suddenly I thought I really needed to own a Hemi," Jeff recalls. "I didn't think about putting it in the '57, I just thought it would be neat to own an early Hemi. So I called this guy and went to see the car. He lived in one of those parts of L.A. that seem like they're South Dakota or something: totally rural, totally derelict, and still totally in the middle of L.A. I bought the car, drove my truck up to his house, pulled the engine and trans out right there, and then sat on the New Yorker's fender for three hours waiting for Memory Lane (a SoCal wrecking yard) to come pick up the hulk. I took the Hemi home, took it apart, and then it sat for a couple of years."

Almost simultaneously, Jeff was working on The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles around the rural Southern California town of Piru, where he met and began talking with Ellery Engel, of Ellery Engel Restoration Specialties, well known for quality restoration work, despite its obscure location. Jeff eventually decided to ship the '57 up to Engel, where he began separating the body from the frame and then replacing the entire floorpan, both rear quarters, and both rockers with fresh metal. "There's no mud on the car at all," Jeff claims.

The chassis, though, was shipped to Tony Tierno at Tierno's General Fabrication in Los Angeles, where the question of what exactly was going to power Jeff's '57 came to a head. "I was thinking of a 409 with Hilborn injection" Jeff says, before combining the 392 Hemi already in his possession with the old Chevy came to mind. From there, it was a matter of construction. "It turns out, the Hemi is the same length as a small-block Chevy, so that was no problem," Jeff explains. "But it wouldn't clear the steering box. So eventually, we swapped the entire stock front suspension for one from Jim Meyer Racing that uses custom A-arms, rear-steer Camaro spindles, coilover shocks, a front antisway bar, and rack-and-pinion steering." The rest of the chassis is straightforward: a 9-inch rearend scavenged from a Lincoln Versailles, Posies leaf springs mounted inboard using a TCI kit, and Bilstein shocks. A PBR-based Baer Racing braking system was installed with 13-inch rotors up front and 12-inchers in the rear.

Now that the powerplant fit, the chassis was essentially complete, and the body was in the hands of a competent shop, Jeff's attention turned to finishing the engine. "I called Street & Performance, and they had an intake on their shelf for the 392 Hemi," he says. " a TPI-style system with a custom sheetmetal intake that was supposed to work with a GM computer. So I got that."

Early Hemis and '80s-spec GM computers weren't meant to go together, but optimism reigned supreme as the block was fit with a Crower billet crank that added a half-inch of stroke (for a total displacement of 450 ci). Todd McKenzie of McKenzie's Head Service ported the Hot Heads aluminum chunks, which are the topper to a spectacular early Hemi.

As the body was being finished-firewall smoothed, DuPont Lime Gold on most of it, metallic charcoal on the roof, engine-turned panels along the rear quarters-a Richmond five-speed manual transmission became a surprise addition to the mix.

With the Hemi installed and the '57 finished around a Ciadella custom interior incorporating a Glide front bench seat, reproduction stock upholstery, '68 Impala door-panel fabric stretched into a headliner, Daytona Weave '55 Corvette carpeting, and an engine-turned dash, Jeff Mann was finally ready to drive his car-a mere 17 years after he acquired it.

"I immediately took it to the chassis dyno and was totally disappointed," Jeff recalls. "I was only making like 350 hp at the rear wheels. Totally limp. But at least I was driving it. Coming home from the dyno, I was on the 210 freeway when the oil pressure started dropping. The aftermarket oil pump I'd insisted on installing had worn its gear down on one side completely. The oil-pump shaft seized up and cracked the block's webbing, and that was that for that block. I think I'd put something like 100 miles on the car."

At this point, Jeff had a choice: heave the car out of his life or double up and invest again in achieving the brute-force monster he'd envisioned. Since the car is on these pages, the choice he made is obvious.

"I found another block, and a friend said, 'You know, we could put a Vortech on this thing,'" Jeff says with a sigh. "At that point, it was sort of, well, why the hell not? I'd already thrown so much cash into this thing; at least it ought to be fast."

Using the crank, heads, Ross forged pistons from the original Hemi, and a new block, Jeff had that friend assemble the engine and work out a scheme to plumb in a Vortech blower. "My friend's shop is pretty close to Kenny Duttweiler's in Saticoy, , and after he built the engine, including a front plate to mount the blower, we took it to Duttweiler's to have Kenny dyno it," Jeff says. "And the first thing Kenny tells us is, 'You know, the blower is mounted on there so it rotates backward.' That was a pretty basic problem, so we ripped the engine apart-again-and Jim Bassett at Bones Fab in Camarillo, , redesigned the accessory-drive system with a single serpentine belt and the blower spinning in the correct direction." Bones Fab (www.bonesfab.com) also built the custom headers, figured out how to make the Vintage Air A/C system blow cold, and generally handled most of the final assembly chores.

Duttweiler added a crank-trigger ignition, a big Accufab throttle body, wideband sensors, and an Accel DFI engine-control computer, and on the dyno, it was finally making serious power: 830 hp at 5,500 rpm and 823 lb-ft of peak torque at 4,900 rpm at the crank while running 12 pounds of boost on pump gas (and over 900 hp when running race fuel). And with Duttweiler tuning, there was reason to believe the car would be driveable, too. After about 30 pulls on Duttweiler's dyno that included a rocker-arm failure and numerous gasket leaks, the engine just went, according to Jeff, "poof. So Kenny pulled the heads off and one of the pistons had burned through at the crown. Like the edge of a hot dime had been pushed through the crown. There just wasn't enough material on the dome of these naturally aspirated pistons to handle the blower pressure. So, poof." Another set of pistons was ordered with what the brain trust hoped would have the appropriately rugged, blower-ready, material heft. Those pistons were installed, and the engine was reinstalled into the '57 at Bones Fab.

Then, on the drive home from the Bones shop, Jeff blew another head gasket. "This time, I pulled the heads off and there was another hole in a piston-this time near a valve relief. We'd moved the ring land so close to the valve relief that it developed a hot spot. So we built the engine again-with a set of JE custom blower pistons-and this time, we moved the ring lands down so they actually crossed the wristpins."

All that brings the car to late 2006-22 years after Jeff bought it-and finally he's driving it regularly. "I've got a couple thousand miles on it now," he says with some relief. "It runs cool, it has more than 600 lb-ft of torque at 2,000 rpm, and it's very driveable. It's a wicked car-more than I ever expected." All he had to do to get it was endure an improvised, advanced engine-development program that started with a simple notion and veered straight through too much time and a mound of cash.

"I'm no millionaire, so I never could have afforded to do this if it meant writing one big check," Jeff says now. "But over 20 years, I could afford it. Of course, my daughter is 6 now, and when it comes time for her to go to college, well, I'm going to have to be dead and she's going to have to sell the car."

Quick Inspection: '57 Chevrolet Bel Air
Jeff Mann * South Pasadena, CA

Powertrain
Engine: The '58 Chrysler 392 Hemi block is stuffed with a Crower 11/42-inch stroker crank (for a total displacement of 450 ci), Crower 7.1-inch billet-steel rods, and custom JE forged pistons. Hot Heads aluminum cylinder heads ported by Todd McKenzie of McKenzie's Head Service are fitted with Comp Cams stainless valves actuated by a Rocker Arm Specialties roller valvetrain and Smith Bros. pushrods. The single-pattern Comp camshaft features 0.571-inch lift and 242 degrees of duration at 0.050. A Vortech V-7 YSi supercharger driven by a Bones Fab-engineered serpentine drive setup throws 12 pounds of boost into the engine through an Accufab 95mm throttle body on a Street & Performance-fabricated sheetmetal intake. Fuel and spark are controlled by an Accel DFI computer and an MSD crank trigger. Bones Fab also built the custom headers and exhaust system with Flowmaster Delta Flow mufflers. A Be Cool aluminum radiator is aided by twin electric cooling fans. Everything works because Kenny Duttweiler at Duttweiler Performance in Saticoy, California, established the fuel map and tuned it on his dynamometer.

Power: On the Duttweiler dyno running pump gas, this engine produced 830 hp at 5,500 rpm and 823 lb-ft of peak torque at 4,900 rpm.

Transmission: A Richmond five-speed is hooked to the engine through a McLeod twin-disc clutch, a Wilcap custom flywheel, and a Wilcap adapter plate with a McLeod Chevy bellhousing.

Rearend: The Ford 9-inch rearend (from a Lincoln Versailles) was fitted with Mark Williams 31-spline axles and a Detroit Locker centersection carrying 2.91 gears.

Chassis
Frame: The stock '57 Chevy frame was powdercoated black and modified to accept the Hemi by Tierno's General Fabrication. In back, the rear leaf springs were moved inboard for increased tire clearance, while the entire front suspension was replaced with a Jim Meyer Racing system.

Suspension: The Jim Meyer Racing front-suspension system uses tubular A-arms, QA1 coilovers, second-generation Camaro spindles with rear steer, and a power rack-and-pinion steering gear. It's finished with a 111/44-inch Speedway Engineering antisway bar. The rearend is suspended on Posies leaf springs and Bilstein shocks with a 111/48-inch Hellwig antisway bar.

Brakes: They are Baer Racing PBR 13-inch rotors in front with two-piston calipers and 12-inch rotors in back with single-piston calipers. The system was fabricated by Bones Fab.

Wheels: The round things at each corner are Colorado Custom Leadville 17-inch wheels.

Tires: Those wheels are wrapped in P225/55R17 front and P255/60R17 rear Toyo tires.

Style
Body: It has been completely restored with new sheetmetal by Ellery Engel of Ellery Engel Restoration Specialties. The firewall was smoothed, and the rocker moldings and dashboard were restored. The hood and trunk emblems were shaved, and custom driving lights were fitted into the front bumper in place of the rubber bullets.

Paint: The body is painted DuPont Lime Gold with the roof finished in Charcoal Metallic. The distinctive Bel Air panel inserts on the rear fenders have been replaced with machine-turned steel panels.

Interior: The interior was covered with Dynamat insulation and stock-pattern Ciadella upholstery on a Glide front bench seat. Ciadella's '55 Corvette Daytona Weave carpeting was also used. The headliner was fabricated from the door-panel fabric for a '68 Impala. The power windows operate using the stock window cranks as triggers. A Colorado Custom Leadville steering wheel tops the ididit tilt steering column. A Classic Instruments gauge cluster is set into the dashboard alongside engine-turned panels

Photo Gallery: 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air - Dare To Be Difficult - Hot Rod Magazine

Here's how the HOT ROD Top 10 works: Each staff member flips through every page of every issue in 2007, from January through December, and makes a list of their favorite vehicles found in those issues. It can be any type of vehicle whatsoever, and there are no criteria on choosing a car for the Top 10 other than that it floats that staffer's boat. Race car, street car, concept car, truck, bike, van, SUV . . . whatever. If they think it's cool, it goes on their list. Then we put all the lists together and see which vehicles got the most votes. The more votes a car gets, the higher on the list it goes. Inevitably the list ends up having 20 or 30 cars on it, so we all have to gather together and fight it out to pare the number down to 10. That's when it gets fun.

So here they are: Hot Rod's Top 10 for 2007. Some readers will no doubt holler and scream that we left their favorite vehicle off the list, and that's fine-let us hear it. If you can keep the profanities to a minimum, we might even publish your letter.

Jon Huber
'79 Ford Mustang
January Issue

In this era of wicked-fast street 5.0L Mustangs, we're still shocked that very few of them enter our Drag Week(tm) playground. When we saw Jon Huber's '79 Fox pull into Cordova Dragway for the start of the '06 HOT ROD Drag Week(tm), we muttered among ourselves, "Finally, a Mustang." Then Jon started it, and the jig was up. There was no 5.0L under the hood. Instead, it had a seriously pissed-off 2.8L four-cylinder with an ARCA circle track head, a turbo, and prodigious tuning on the computer. This little thing carried the wheels perfectly straight for 100 feet on every pass, made the drive mostly without issue, and damn near won the Power Adder Small-Block class over cars with way bigger motors. It was the little engine that could, and it made believers out of a lot of folks during that week. It also stirred the souls of the HOT ROD editors who got to watch it scream. -Rob Kinnan

George Lange
'67 Ford Mustang
June Issue

What happens when one of America's top street rod builders gets hold of some late-model sheetmetal . . . say, a '67 Mustang? Some serious genre bending, that's what. Bobby Alloway's rods have won the Ridler Award, the AMBR, and Street Rod of the Year. The Mustang he built for George Lange wears a '60s ponycar skin, but its flavor is high-dollar luxury street rod. The interior is voluptuous in blue and white leather, while the exterior has been carefully smoothed, contoured, and accentuated. An Art Morrison Max-G chassis replaces the original unit floorpan, while the powerplant is a 4.6 topped with Ford GT heads, twin turbos, intercoolers, and throttle bodies, all polished to a fare-thee-well. And there's custom billet all over the place, including the subtly restyled lamp bezels and fuel filler. So what does it all mean? Who can say, but we know we can expect more musclecar-era cars done to the hilt in maximum street rod style, further blurring the traditional boundaries between "street rod" and "street machine." And what does it matter? Those are just labels anyway. Either way it's a hot rod, and this one was one of the Top 10 for 2007. -Bill McGuire

Year One
'77 Pontiac
Trans Am
August Issue

MTV viewers named the '77 Trans Am from the original Smokey and the Bandit as the most awesome car ever, which is no surprise. The second-gen TAs with their garish screaming-chicken hood stickers have morphed from '70s gold-chain kitsch to completely bitchin', and the price tags have risen along with that transformation. As a company founded on the creation of restoration parts for Trans Ams (albeit the '69 model), Year One knew it had to get in on the frenzy, so it created a brand-new '77 Trans Am that you can buy. Burt Reynolds even approves. The company kept the quintessential TA look, but upped the ante on everything inside, outside, and underneath to bring it to modern, high-tech standards. And if you want one all it takes is a big check and the ability to decide between one of three build levels. Get yours today. -Rob Kinnan

Jeff Mann
'57 Chevy
April Issue

We never tire of tales of resolute persistence in the face of adversity and continual destruction in finishing a car in the manner that it was originally envisioned. Jeff Mann's '57 certainly earned its feature title, "Dare to be Difficult," as it's taken him down a twisted and expensive path for the last 22 years, uncovering every single issue that could arise from asking a blown 392 Hemi to make 800-plus horsepower reliably. Expensive? You bet. Jeff tells us, "I could have had five 572ci big-block crate motors for what it cost me to put the Hemi in this car, but that's money well spent." In this case, we agree. -Christopher Campbell

Robert Wood
'35 Chevy Modified
March Issue

It's an old race car body slapped on a dirt Modified chassis, the engine is a me-too small-block Chevy that doesn't make a ton of power, and there are some things about the car that don't thrill us that much, but that's not what Robert's Dare to Be Different ride is about. This car is 100 percent "kiss my you-know-what" attitude and miles of rubber, and it looks like nothing else on the street. It was one of eight vehicles included in the March issue's big "Dare to Be Different" section, and it got more reader response than any car HOT ROD featured for the year. The kicker, and one of the reasons it held firm in our Top Ten voting (and nearly became HOT ROD of the Year), is that none of those responses were negative. People just flat dig this car. We hope it inspires a trend. Not necessarily the huge-tire deal, but the mindset of building a street car using a circle track parts catalog. Look into it; you'll be surprised what's out there for the roundy-round crowd. -Rob Kinnan

Darren Tedder
'71 Plymouth 'Cuda
August Issue

Darren's awesome '71 'Cuda is not only a 1,000hp street-driven car capable of 8-second quarter-miles, but it's also antiseptically clean. The three-pronged combination of show-car shine, street-driving capability, and dragstrip nastiness is an exceedingly rare one, but Darren's Plymouth hits it, hard, on all three points. Darren brought the car out to play at the '06 Pump Gas Drags(tm) and posted consistent 8.90s with a best of 8.914 at 153.77. He nearly won. Word is he's building an E85-powered Hemi for the '07 HOT ROD Drag Week(tm). If that's true, this monster will also prove its mettle over 1,000-plus miles of public road. And that, folks, is one fantastic hot rod. -Christopher Campbell

Rob Freyvogel
'63 Pontiac Tempest
November Issue

Sometimes it's easy to get caught up in all the CAD-inspired, CNC-machined wonderment of contemporary automotive technology and lose track of what hot rodding is really about: having fun with cars, exercising your own skills and creativity, and leaving long black marks all over everything. Cars like Rob Freyvogel's '63 Tempest bring it back home for us again. Using parts he scrounged from eBay and swap meets, Rob made huge power from a big-block Chevy running E98 ethanol fuel. The key pieces are a pair of remote-mounted turbos borrowed from a Cummins diesel application and a trunk-mounted charge cooler. But while the approach is low-buck, it is by no means low-tech-Rob also cooked up a home-brewed EFI system. The best result at the track so far is 9.86 at 149 mph. Just to have a little fun, Rob cloaked all this homebuilt tricknology in an oxidized red paint job and a set of ashtray hubcaps-and to complete the scam, the engine is painted Pontiac blue and wears a 326 air cleaner. So as far as you know, this is just another derelict '63 Tempest shambling down the street . . . that is, until Rob stands on the throttle and lays down some big, black stripes.-Bill McGuire

Dale Earnhardt, Jr.
'70 Chevy Camaro
December Issue

Dale Earnhardt, Jr., needs no introduction, and neither does Detroit Speed & Engineering. Put the two together and you know the result is going to be top-notch. But man, we didn't know the Camaro they conspired to build would be this nice. It would be easy to slap a Pro Touring label on this car, and there certainly is no shortage of Pro Touring Camaros built to an extreme level, but Dale's car is more our personal speed. Though the accouterments blur the line a little, the inspiration was more vintage Trans-Am than current Pro Touring, and instead of going straight for four-digit horsepower numbers and over-the-top induction plumbing like most people do, this car has a simple, 450-ish- horsepower GM crate motor with a carburetor. That's because Dale plans on driving the car hard. And unlike with so many "finished" cars that the owner is scared to get dirty, Detroit Speed handed the keys over to Dale before we shot the car, and he is driving the wheels off it right now. -Rob Kinnan

Ross and Beth Myers
'36 Ford
July Issue

When Troy Trepanier of Rad Rides by Troy went after this year's Ridler Award at the Detroit Autorama, he didn't just turn the conventional thinking about show cars upside down. He also turned it inside out. The car he designed and built for Ross and Beth Myers was a '36 Ford three-window coupe on the outside and a free-form expressionist sculpture on the inside. Troy carefully redesigned every bit of the undercarriage, from the Ford FE engine's oil pan to the stylized differential housing and control arms. So what Troy built was essentially a car within a car. Now it was as though the competition faced not one but two originally designed, exquisitely constructed Troy cars occupying the same physical space on the show floor. Beating one Troy car is difficult enough; how in the world can you ever beat two? But then that is what the Ridler Award is about: not just raising the bar, but periodically redrawing the boundaries. "There is no point going to this level of effort just to build a car like some other car," Troy says of his first Ridler winner. "You have to give people something new." -Bill McGuire

'69 Plymouth Barracuda
February Issue

It's called Blowfish and it is the second Rad Rides car on this year's Top 10 list. That one shop could build two Top 10 cars is quite remarkable, but when you consider that those two cars could not be further apart in concept, and that the builder is not known for specializing in either genre, you get a whole new appreciation for the Rad Rides crew and especially their leader, Troy Trepanier. Troy has long been known for building high-end street machines and Dare to Be Different kinds of cars, and a street rod has slipped out of Rad Rides' doors every now and then, but nothing even remotely approaching the level of a Ridler Award winner. That changed this year. Likewise, nobody has asked Troy to build a legit race car from scratch, but when frequent customer George Poteet wanted to run 300 mph on the Salt, he called on Troy and his boys.

The result was a combination of many different styles of car building that all work seamlessly together. The body style and evil 1,200hp, turbocharged four-cylinder engine made it a Dare to Be Different car; the attention to detail was as good or better than nearly anything you'll find at an indoor car show; the level of fabrication rivals a modern Formula 1 car; and, oh yeah, it ran 255.412 mph at Bonneville on a partial pass, setting the record in F/Blown Fuel Competition Coupe in 2006. All that adds up to the most incredible hot rod of the year. -Rob Kinnan

Photo Gallery: The Top 10 Cars of 2007 and Hot Rod of the Year - Hot Rod Magazine