It’s all together now—all that remains is a little testing, tuning, and tweaking.

You’ll get the chance to read the full story in the January issue of PHR, but here’s the skinny ahead of the newsstand. Our ’75 Laguna—named Project Talladega—is nearing completion. Its 408-ci small-block made 560 hp on the engine dyno, thanks to a .600-inch lift COMP solid roller cam, AFR Comp Eliminator 210 heads, Edelbrock Performer RPM Air Gap intake, and a Holley 750 Street HP carb. After being mated to a Phoenix Transmission Products 700-R4 overdrive, the heavy-breathing small-block made 366 horsepower at the rear wheels, as seen on the SuperFlow chassis dyno at Westech Performance Group.

That might seem like a big loss, but the precipitous drop in power is pretty common on the conservative SuperFlow unit. You’ll remember that our 626-hp big-block 496 fell to just 419 hp on its first meeting with the same chassis dyno, and ran 11.70s at that power level when nested into our ’68 Chevelle. As with the Street Sweeper Chevelle, we’ve discovered that our first attempt at a torque converter was extremely loose, so we’ll be ordering a tighter unit for the ’75 Laguna to see if we can step it up. That same move was good for an extra 25 hp on the Chevelle.