Best Muscle Car Chassis for the Challenge?

bmw88rider said:

I know the perfect challenge car is parked in a storage lot here in town. No clue who the owner is but it's a Buick G body that looks like it has a snail under the hood and has been there for as long as I've been walking that trail which is over 2 years now. 

Those make me sad.  For several years, I watched a 72 Cutlass deteriorate in a space across from my parents' storage locker, until they cleaned it out.  It's been over ten years, and it would not be surprising if it is still there.  At another storage lot I drive past on the way to the in-laws, there's a mid-to-late-60s Ford sedan there that has been sitting in the same place since before we were married, and we are a few months away from our 20th anniversary.

SN95 302

Offer them $1200 for it. Fab up some braces, replace the transmission, maybe a cam and enjoy. 

Or grow the mullet and rock this. 

3G Camaro

4th gen camaro.  An early lt1 car would be a solid drag car and the suspension is better suited to autocross than an sn95 mustang.

This thread should be titled "best not-a-muscle-car chassis"

You guys sure have some love for pony cars, mid size cars and Japanese sports cars.

Muscle car chassis? GM B-body anything. Super common,  cheap speed parts, easy to find and the 9C1 Caprice goodies all bolt on.

Any of the other stuff that's been brought up? G-body or F-body because cheap performance parts and all the super cheap, good handling suspension parts from the circle track suppliers.

In reply to KinPer :

Agreed... anything that comes close to being in-budget and pre-1980 seems to have reached some version of a point of no return. But then again, dudes showed up in a '78 LTD this year... it wasn't pretty, it wasn't fast, it didn't handle, but it did compete, for whatever that's worth. 

BTW, a quick FB Marketplace search netted me a few viable candidates sub-$2k (no colonnades though), including a '68 Fairlane rolling chassis ($1k), a foxbody Mustang GT rolling chassis ($1200), a '64 Corvair convertible basket case ($750), and a C4 'vette basket case ($850). They're out there, but they ain't gems.

In reply to darkbuddha :

I think given the new rules, the best target is to start with a rough but running car, or better yet, a non-runner with loads of spares or a parts car, so you can exploit the $2000 selloff limit to get the car running again.