Scoops That Work

One of the things that makes the original gangster muscle cars of the ’60s and ’70s so entertaining is that many of them came with hood scoops. Of course, some modern cars also have scoops. But it is not quite the same thing. The original gangster scoops didn’t just scoop.

They worked.

For instance, the rear-facing shaker scoop that was a defining feature of the Pontiac Trans-Am from 1970-1981. Not all of them scooped but all of them worked. The ones that scooped and worked came standard with all 1970-72 Trans-Ams. Beginning in 1973, they just worked.

Shook, that is.

The scoop mounted to the engine and poked through a hole in the hood. Most hood scoops are basically holes in the hood that duct (cooler) outside air to the engine; the idea is that the cooler air is denser and so helps the engine make more power. The early (1970-’72) shakers did that. When the driver floored the gas pedal, an electric solenoid caused the flapper door on the rear of the scoop – which faced the driver – to flop open, admitting cooler outside air to the big four barrel carburetor that sat on top of the engine. But that was only part of the show. The main attraction was the way the scoop shook along with the engine, because it was mounted on the engine. It also danced – as dictated by the driver’s foot. A push on the pedal caused the scoop to torque to the left; ease off and it centered again and resumed its shaking. It was all very entertaining.

Mopar – that’s Dodge and Plymouth – had some entertaining scoops as well. Perhaps the most entertaining was the hidden scoop, which Mopar styled the Air Grabber. This scoop laid flat most of the time. When the driver wanted to feed the engine cooler, outside air – and also to give a good show to anyone who might be looking – he could activate the scoop via a switch under the dash that caused the Air Grabber to rise up. It was decorated like a WWII-era P40 Warhawk fighter, with shark’s teeth on both sides and hungry-looking eyes.

Scoops that scooped were regulated off the showroom floor for awhile, via “drive by” noise standards that were tough for carbureted muscle cars to comply with because when you floor the gas pedal, the carb’s four barrels (some muscle cars had six or even eight of these) sucked air rather loudly. There was little to no baffling in these setups because that would have impeded airflow and so defeated the point of having a scoop, if scooping was the point. That’s why the Trans-Am’s scoop was boarded up beginning in 1973 and stayed that way all the way to the end, in 1981.

Interestingly, a scoop that scooped – but and worked – made a brief comeback in 1980 when Chevy added what was styled an Air Induction scoop to the Z28 Camaro that year. It didn’t shake, because it was affixed to the Camaro’s hood. But it did scoop, very much like the early ’70s Trans-Am’s did.

Like the early TA’s scoop, the ’80-’81 Z28 had a rear facing flapper door that would flop open when the driver mashed the gas pedal. How did Chevy manage to get past the “drive by” noise regs? It probably had something to do with the ’80-81 Z28’s engine – a 350 cubic inch V8 – being much smaller and far less ferocious than the early ’70s Trans-Am’s 400 and 455 cubic inch V8s. Having owned both cars, I can attest that an ’80 Z28 with Air Induction is much quieter even when you floor it than a Trans-Am with a 400 or 455 is when you floor it.

The flapper scoop made it into the restyled ’82 Camaro Z28, but the third generation Trans-Am did not get a shaker. That was gone – forever. It did get a functional iteration of the ’80-81 Turbo Trans Am’s off-center hood scoop that wasn’t a scoop at all. The ’80-81 Turbo Trans-Am’s hood bulge was a styling affectation to highlight the turbocharged V8 that was under the hood. Instead of flapper doors to watch open and close, the driver got an array of three lights – Low, Medium and High – to indicate how much turbo-boost was being applied. The all-new 1982 Trans-Am had been slated to get the same Pontiac-made 301 turbo engine – and hence the turbo hod bulge – but GM put the kibosh on the Pontiac V8 and all ’82-up Trans-Ams got the same Chevy-made V8s as the Camaro Z28. Pontiac thought it’d impart some difference to make the “turbo” hood bulge into a scoop – and so it was.

Modern cars that have scoops aren’t as entertaining because none of them visibly do anything. They do not have flapper doors that open; they’re just open. You can’t see the air being drawn into the engine. None of them are mounted to the engine and so they do not dance along with the engine – and your right foot.

So while they work, they’re just not as fun.

. . .

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