History Uncertain T has been found!

I thought it looked like a strangely bare 1966 cover as well as unfamiliar. I was just looking at 66 as im selling off that year. Only keeping em up til 65, need more shelf space

 

Steves a bit odd and eccentric, should take a look at his facebook page....if you eat meat he wants you to run the other direction from him as fast as you can

 

Cool that the car has returned to the public. That's the only interesting thing about this story.
The rest is just unworthy gossip.

I hope that when I am at the age of Mr. Scott my whole life won't be revolving around a car that I built/owned 60 years ago and sold 40 years ago.

 

I fail to see where Steve Scott has implied anything ... he clearly states that HE never sold the car, that he is no longer friends with the person his wife sold it to, and that he was completely unaware of the recent sale. Nothing implied there. If Steve had been included in the recent sale, he certainly wouldn't be asking what it sold for

Based on your claim (with evidence) that Steve and seller had an amicable relationship up until relatively recently, it certainly appears as though the recent sale of the car and the time the relationship failed are suspiciously close to one another. Which begs the question, why would that be? A possible explanation for that anger/resentment would be that Steve actually DID have an agreement of some sort with his "friend" and the friend failed to hold up his end of that agreement.

I had a verbal agreement with the "friend" I sold the snowmobiles to. The machines were sold to him cheap, specifically because of our agreement. He screwed me. I have a right to be angry.

Your analogy regarding the sale of your house includes no mention of any agreement made with the buyer at the time of purchase. You weren't screwed, you were just sad someone altered your former home then sold it. Without any sort of agreement made at the time you sold, you have no right or reason to be angry when the new owner sold it.

Regarding the UT ... if there was no agreement and Dick bought it legitimately, Dick had every right to sell it without any input from Steve and Steve would have no reason to be angry. Yet Steve IS angry and has mentioned that there WAS an agreement of some sort.

What does make sense is this, although this imagined scenario may not be accurate, it does fit ... Steve's wife, in anger, sold the car to Dick. Steve wasn't happy about the sale but, after contacting Dick (his friend at the time and buyer of the car), Steve agreed to the sale possibly due to needing his half of the sale (wife got the other half) to help finance the impending divorce (which DID happen). It is not unheard of for a sour wife to sell a husbands belonging for below market value. So, car gets sold below market/expected value, Steve knows buyer and doesn't dispute the sale due to his contacting the friend/buyer and making an agreement of some sort with him. Possibly something along the lines of "I know you bought the car cheap and, due to my impending divorce, I really don't expect to have a place to store it, so here's what I'll do ... I won't legally dispute the sale as long as you agree to _________". The fact that Steve and Dick remained friends suggests Dick agreed to the terms laid out by Steve. Apparently, according to Steve, the agreement included Dick restoring the car ... that never happened. Years turned into decades, the two are still friendly and in contact with each other right up until the "agreement" is broken when Dick sells the car to Beau without Steve's knowledge.

The above story, although it "fits", is just a suggested scenario based on information gleaned directly from the builder of the car. You, an admitted newbie to this story, are posting nothing more than hearsay due to the fact that the buyer (Dick) has remained silent on this matter.

What's the point of all this? Just that it appears the original owner/builder may have not only gotten screwed by his former wife, he may also have been/is suggesting he's been screwed by a good "friend" as well ... not too hard to imagine that leaving an extremely sour taste in his mouth. No one can create a true "documentary" without allowing both sides of this story to be told and, without Steve's input, I can't see how that can possibly happen.

Restore the car, show it, but don't tell the "story" if it isn't truly accurate.

 

Steve states on his Facebook page he sold it during a bad time in his life.

Steve has been on the Hamb saying the same thing, He also has no memory of the car being painted the gold color or other certain things. This is not to bash him in any way, but if you followed this when he first signed on the hamb and first started taking money for model kits from people with no follow up you would know things don't add up. I'm sure he went through some rough patches in his life.

 

The car has surfaced from hiding and will be shown again That's the best news. Although I am not quite clear why it had to be hidden all those years or what really changed, but if it's your car, hide it if you want to.

As for idle gossip, who's not into that?

Gossip topic 1-the whole "how'd the car get sold, who agreed to what, who's mad at who, what's the story about the sale-wasn't Steve's name on the title and, if so, how could it be sold without his agreement,etc"?

Gossip topic #2 really interests me on a slow,cold winter's day. Relying on the veracity of the previously cited articles: Here's a 17 year old kid who sees a friend's drawing and has the technical skills to scale it up to full size,. He's got the technical skills to fabricate a chassis, shorten and custom make a drive train, create a perfect custom body from the relatively new medium of fiberglass (literally with his bare hands), do all the wiring and finish work, convince major players in the paint and upholstery business to undertake his car-in a timely manner and then gets a major contract to make a model of his car for national market promotion.He does all this while the (reportedly poor)family suffers the loss of his dad , and he has to drop out of college and get part-time jobs to "complete" the car at a cost of $15,000. At the same time as the average personal income was $3600 a year (pre-tax) and it's unlikely a college dropout in an agricultural area would make that. Maybe his mom did take out a loan, but likely her house, even if there was no mortgage, barely served as collateral, so this seems risky, no? Keep in mind that $15,000 in 1965 would equal about $147,474 today.
And then, he never builds another (known) car again.

We can agree that these questions take nothing away from the actual car, are nobody's business and only interesting, but idle, speculation. But, I don't buy the original tale. The conspiracy theorist in me thinks that there was major money/help running in the background-maybe Monogram?

 

"Qver the Top"--not much for the cartoon looking creations, but this certainly made its mark with all the show & magazine exposure, model kit fan base & even the likes of a full-size model kit display on the circuit

 

I went over to Steve's Facebook page and the more I read, the less I believed his recollection of events. He doesn't recall details of the car build or when some things were changed, but has vivid details of how it changed hands that he conveniently only shared now. Colour me skeptical.

What I find funny is the fact that he thinks he's entitled to know the purchase price because he is the original builder of the car, but insists he'll have no involvement with the current owner. Very strange.

Bingo. Joining a forum, spamming several posts then disappearing, then later coming back and being snotty about the fact people didn't respond as you thought they would definitely misses the mark.

Yeah, here are the real covers for June, July, and August that year.

For someone who says he just misunderstood the tone of the forum, you sure make some snide remarks. Users who come in with no introduction and spam the forum typically are given a hard time. If you genuinely want to learn what people respond to, you'll have a better time than making these types of comments and continuing to tick people off.

 

Steve Scott has the unique opportunity here to relive his 15 minutes of fame, wether he chooses to do so or not is totally up to him!

 

No kidding. He's still taking people's money for another run of models that is coming at any time. I'm skeptical.

All I've seen from Mr. Scott just paints him as an unreliable narrator.

 

This threads like a political debate....nobody has all that much real information, lots of guessing and lots of getting worked up about he said she saids that dont involve you and some solid side taking lol its sad and entertaining at the same time. I dont know steve but i spent about 20 min on his facebook and quickly realised I dont want to know steve, he built a wicked car back in the day. Like many of us, it was sold and its not been his for a very long time. Who cares about the gray? Its been sold legally to some great folks with all the ability in the world to take care of it. Thats a win. We could all spin our tires for months whining about every amazing car we ever sold... I know I have a long list that fit that particular bill. Spilled milk, lets not cry over it

 

""Gossip topic #2 really interests me on a slow,cold winter's day. Relying on the veracity of the previously cited articles: Here's a 17 year old kid who sees a friend's drawing and has the technical skills to scale it up to full size,. He's got the technical skills to fabricate a chassis, shorten and custom make a drive train, create a perfect custom body from the relatively new medium of fiberglass (literally with his bare hands), do all the wiring and finish work, convince major players in the paint and upholstery business to undertake his car-in a timely manner and then gets a major contract to make a model of his car for national market promotion.He does all this while the (reportedly poor)family suffers the loss of his dad , and he has to drop out of college and get part-time jobs to "complete" the car at a cost of $15,000. At the same time as the average personal income was $3600 a year (pre-tax) and it's unlikely a college dropout in an agricultural area would make that. Maybe his mom did take out a loan, but likely her house, even if there was no mortgage, barely served as collateral, so this seems risky, no? Keep in mind that $15,000 in 1965 would equal about $147,474 today.
And then, he never builds another (known) car again.""

I too wondered the same as above. When Scott appeared on the Hamb I remembered the car pretty well but I did look it up for a refrsh. As I looked at all the pics I wondered how he had the energy or the tools or the fore thought to take all the pictures, heck money for camera wasn't on my list of car building stuff, just wondering.

 

All this gossip and crap is starting to sound like Instagram

 

Well, it's January, grey,dark and cold. I've got 3 choices-irritate my wife, irritate the HAMB or both. I'm opting for #2.

 

Of all the scenarios I've heard about the UT, & I've followed the threads through the years,,,this is the most likely one that I have ever heard. Everything makes perfect sense. I will keep following but I bet this one will be pretty close. JMO

 

Interesting it has rack and pinion steering, what would that have come from back then?

 

Probably English.

 

I think somewhere in all I read it was from an MGA. But don't think of it as normal R&P, still side steer.

 

Never really cared for the goofy car...like the conflicting stories even less. Zzzzzzzzzzz....

 

The MGA was only made from 1955-1962 so it would have been virtually an almost new bit, with probably limited hot rod applications if The Ut was started in 60-61. Again, a bold move for a novice teenage builder.

 

Amen, Fu&k the drama lest see the car !!

 

I'm looking at the chassis layout just posted here and from an engineering standpoint, this is very innovative and very well done. It looks like Steve Scott has a lot of engineering talent here, to come up with this design. Aside from the one off steering, which I can see would be quite difficult to come up with, there are other innovations as well.
I'm looking at the alternator design arrangement, the way the frame is stepped in, and the way the rear end is mounted on top of the frame. For someone to come up with something like this at such a young age this is very impressive!!

 

Right on! One cool car, is there anymore build articles on it?

 

Some have mentioned that Steve's story changed from "he sold it to Dick" to "my wife sold it to Dick, without my knowledge, while I was out of town for two weeks".

My guess is, after the initial anger created by the sale of the car by Steve's wife, Steve accepted the sale after realizing the car would have been sold during the divorce anyway, the buyer was a friend of his, and Steve was able to make an agreement with the buyer that allowed Steve to play a part in the cars future. Although Steve didn't truly sell the car, specifics were unimportant at that point. "I sold it, we sold it, she sold it" were really not an important part of the story. The bottom line, Steve possibly believed the car couldn't have gone to a better home.

Now, 40 years later, the car gets sold without Steve's knowledge which apparently broke the agreement he had with Dick, and Steve is once again, justifiably angry and, in Steve's mind, the specifics of the sale ARE important to the story. "I got screwed by my wife selling the car without my knowledge now I've been screwed once again by my 'friend' selling the car without my knowledge".

 

Unless I am missing something, and I will admit to not spending a tremendous amount of time looking at the chassis pictures, it is my understanding that he used a single U-joint for a driveshaft. I get that this is a show car but I thought I'd read that this thing was apparently capable of street driving. With no driveshaft, the single U-joint becomes the pivot point which the housing must travel around (IF there is any suspension travel) yet, without housing floaters or trailing arms, that is an impossibility. I get that this is a show car but I thought I also read this was capable of being street driven. Based on my initial peek at the pictures, it appears to me that the leaf springs give the car the appearance of having a rear suspension when in reality, they are nothing more than a means to solidly mount the rear end directly to the frame. In and out of trailers? Sure. Scoot down a smooth drag strip to pick up a driver? Ok. Actually drive around town? Yes, as long as you air down the slicks (which wouldn't have been wrinkle-walls back then) because it looks to me like the only functioning rear suspension that car has is the sidewalls of the rear tires.

 

Go here.... https://www.tbucketplans.com/uncertain-t-exposed/
It is well worth the time to read it, and all the info is there. This car really was an amazing build for it's time.
It is such a shame that the innovative aspects of the car are being overshadowed by the back-story.
Starting to look very much like a social media circus.
Study the actual car, and the way it was designed and executed. That should be what it is all about.

 

I went through my magazine archives, pretty good article.
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It's at the GNRS. Pic from Hollowell motor.co Instagram.