Prepare For Launch

This Space City, USA-based Blown and Injected Colds Cutlass Is a Go for Throttle Up!

- Toby Brooks

We car guys and gals are a nostalgic lot. Many of us start from humble beginnings in our cash-strapped teenage years in less-than stellar rides, only to grow up into successful adults who return to a similar or even the same car and build it the way we wished we could have afforded to way back when.

Take Titusville, Florida resident Dennis McCheskey. Living in the epicenter of American space flight and NASA’s Kennedy Space Center would naturally give someone a penchant for power, and the Sea Ray Boats employee and family man for 20+ years knew that once life afforded the opportunity to build a wild pro street ride, he would opt to return to his roots.

“The one real reason for this car was that my very first ride was a 1981 Cutlass that I bought when I was 14, and I have always liked them,” he shared.

And who wouldn’t? Perhaps influenced by the timeless look of the Warren Johnson Hurst/Olds and other pro stock offerings in the early 1980s, the clean lines of the Olds mobile G-body just beg for the full-on pro street treatment. And while McCheskey’s Olds might be the latest pro streeter in his garage, it isn’t the first.

“This car was built back in the 1990s and was eventually traded to my dad. At the time, I had a pro street 1969 Camaro that my dad really wanted, so we worked a deal,” he said.

Within a week of acquiring the Cutlass, the younger McCheskey had torn it completely apart for a full rebuild. Gone was the sleepy 350 engine and the original paint was stripped. The chassis was modified to accept a stout new big block Chevy and the body was prepped for a slick new finish.