When it comes to the Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational, you don’t come to the track with a car that needs to be pampered. You compete in qualifiers all year long, and you beat the hell out of your car until it’s got nothing left to give. If your car can’t handle every day driving, bumper-to-bumper traffic, the autocross and the road course, it has no reason to be in the OUSCI.
If you ask what kind of transmission can handle throwing their cars into the turns, and pushing them as hard as they can, most of the time you’ll hear a single, two-syllable word: Tremec. Time after time, we hear about someone pumping up the horsepower on their musclecar and breaking their transmission. That’s when they made the decision to step up to a Tremec transmission.
Beginning as a project car, we caught up with Robert McGaffin and his 1965 Oldsmobile to see how far along it’s come. At the SEMA show this past fall, it was staged in the Optima booth ready to hit the invitational with all he’s got. While it wasn’t the only A-body GM vehicle on the tracks, it was one of the few – and about the only Oldsmobile A-body that we saw.
Hurst Drivelines was able to put this package together for Robert, and they provided him with everything he needed to transform this car into the autocrosser they set out to build. Available in 5- and 6-speed varieties, as well as an autocross version of the 5-speed, the Tremec transmission will hold up to whatever these guys put it through, as well as the kind of horsepower these cars are putting out. You can check out the Tremec web site to find out more information about converting your musclecar over to something more reliable than the factory trans. And keep an eye out for our OUSCI coverage in an upcoming article.