No, it is a fake steel bodied '32 Roadster. The only Ford part is the rear-end housing. Image Unavailable, Please Login
Proper ingredients for sure (nice balanced diet of angry parts!)! Wondering though, if you'd then went ahead w/the 24's, would that change it from a hot rod, to a "restorod"?
I built the car from scratch. How could it possibly be a Resto anything??? I just dig cars that are like the ones my 80-year-old buddies built in the 50s-60s. I'm just a wannabe. No one under 60 is legit IMHO. I'm a total poser in my circle.
N.S. When I hang with the real hotrodders I know I am the only one not on Medicare. At Bonneville one year they tried to fine us for tagging one of the dumpsters with our car #. I looked at one of the officials and said "I'm the youngest guy on the team, I'm in my 60's. Do we look like a bunch of graffiti artists? ". Over the hill delinquents maybe but not graffiti.
Anyone else find it interesting they didn't even start the engine? I wonder how many miles have been put on it? Diffinately different schools of thought on dong these projects. Not that I could ever hope to be able to afford what this car probably costs, the idea of just giving some guy the car and a truck load of money and then you just pick up the completed car doesn't interest me.
Maybe it's about building what you want. "Hot Rodding," and all that. Want to know why I want to build a modified/resto-mod/pro-touring/whatever you want to call it? Because I only want certain features. I don't want my car to keep me in the lane. I don't want my car to have A-pillars that look like 6X6s. I don't want my car to have 47 conflicting lines down the side, or a big battery where the trunk floor goes, or about 90% of all the other crap that comes in a new car. But I do want good looks, good handling, decent fuel mileage, great reliability, power seats (but I don't need the car to remember my preferences), tilt wheel, good brakes, etc, etc, etc. I want a nice stereo and the ability to listen t my I-pod. I want GPS and A/C, and cruise control so I can take it on trips. I want to be able to fix the damned thing myself, and I don't want everything so interconnected that when my lane-change monitor goes out, my power seats stop working. If that's being a "poser" to you, well, no offense intended, but you can kiss my butt. I'm not building my car for you (or anyone else for that matter), I'm building it for me!
The trouble is, so much isn't "classic." The rare cars are, sure, but the run of the mill family cars are just that, boring, run of the mill family cars. They don't bring much money, and, at best, are used to make clones of the rare cars. At worst, they're usually drivers that are left to the fate of rust and neglect. Many times, the original drivetrains are long gone, as are half the other important parts needed for a proper restoration (usually take off to restore one of the rare cars). They just aren't special. Take my '72 Cutlass for example. It was rusted. Someone had done a very poor job of replacing the rear quarters (so I needed to replace them again, along with the trunk pan). It had been in multiple small accidents through the years and needed a rear body panel. Plus, it was a nothing car. It likely came with a 350 olds, Quadrajet, and a Turbo 350 transmission. It only had two things going for it, it had A/C and it was a convertible. Otherwise, it was a low-option, low performance, nothing Cutlass, and if I hadn't taken it on to modify it, it likely would have ended up rusted away and then crushed. Why should anyone care what I did to it? My father's '59 Impala was pretty rust free, but that's the extent of it's value. No original engine, no original transmission, and no options. It was likely a straight-6 powered car, to boot. Yawn. Now, an all original car, or a car with rare options, etc? Yeah, preserve those. But the hundreds of thousands of run-of-the-mill, nothing cars? Or the thousands upon thousands of cars that have already been modified/hot rodded? No one gives a crap. They aren't economically restorable, anyway.
Take this Chevelle as an example. It's for sale on the local Craigslist. It's almost certainly a 307/auto car originally. It's been hot rodded probably a dozen times in its lifetime, has no interior, no engine, and no transmission. Probably has no interesting options, either. Who cares what someone does to it? It's economically dumb to attempt to restore it, as the end result will never be as valuable as the cost to restore it would be. So why not build something cool? And guess what, if done well, the "resto-mod" (or whatever you want to call it) will probably be worth what you have in it (and you can have a blast driving it).
Jay Leno has done a few resto-mods. His Cunningham has been updated to 12v, 5 speed trans, and modern aluminum cylinder heads much lighter than the original cast iron. The final result is a car that is better than original.
And the legions of Corvettes that had hacked up wheel wells to fit real tires under them and their Powerglide transmission thrown in the dumpster in favor of anything else. Abandoned Tempests turned into GTO lookalikes and modified. The musclecar world has little to fear of original Hemi Mopars or Daytona Chargers or Cold Air Box Corvettes being turned into restorods or whatever we want to call what is being done.
I'd like to know what he started with. It's very possible that car exists only because of what has been done with it. Much the same as many vintage Ferraris survived a crusher only because someone put a Chevy motor in it back in time.
At least when my posse starts talking about cars, the conversation doesn't drift to prostate situations within a few minutes. Medicare????? I hang with old Hot Rodders on life support. They never miss a show even if they need someone else to drive their cars. The car culture and history are dying off every day. I have been fortunate to get in with the crowd that I have.
Thanks for posting the link. It does sound and look good and have some amazing engineering. Still 1500 miles in 4 years is less than 400 miles a year. I can appreciate that some people use cars this way but for me I'd like a car to be more useable than that.
Its interesting, the xj13 mtoor was completly different. The civillan car 5.3, even when modded with todays tech does not make that much power. Why are they so bad
I have no issue with using a Jag motor in something else, theyre cool motors. Rods are whole different subject, and eys there art, The Moal rod with a 550 maranello motor is epic . What were talking about is putting an american pushrod V8 in Jag resto mod. To me the essence of the machine is lost when you lose the Jag motor. Now if you used another inline 6 or a v12 in jag, I dont know. I do know a friend of mine was putting newer Jag V8s into old Mk2 jags, Yeah theyre all jag, but I think the essence is lost, and thats where restomods loose it for me. ( I know there was a Daimer 250V8 which was Mk2 with a small Daimer hemi so its a complex argument.) But to me a restomod should, carry orgional style powerplant and origional suspension layout, no matter how modded. In this case the car still retains the essence of the machine which the bodywork imputes. By the same token a ferrari restomod shoudl be ferrari powered, or at least lambo powered. However avette or a viper with a Ryan falconer v12, that would be something, but the falconer v12 is really a pushrod v8 with two extra cylinders.
I disagree with your views on changing running gear. That's the beauty of rodding you choose what you want and if YOU like your car who cares what it is called or what anybody else thinks. YMMV
It was designed by idiots. The heads were the worst design I have ever seen. They must have been designed by the janitor and the entire cam drive was the work of the garbage men.
Bingo. There were some great designs and some great motors. Almost never built by the same company. 53/54 Studebaker. Extraordinary car with a boat anchor for an engine.
