Hot Rods Hot Rod Sports Cars

Now you can't tease us with just 4 pictures. More!

 

I got a few more pictures floating around on this computer but they were loaded small, and I don't know how to make them larger, Plus, there are a few Hamb unfriendly parts on this one.

 

here' s the body parts I started with

 

Posted about this Scarab elsewhere, But it Need's to be filed in this thread..

 

I had no idea where this would go
The original Batmobile (60-64)

 

By any stretch of the imagination this isn’t a hot rod or a sports car.

 

Thats why I wrote that I had no idea where to put it. Feel free to delete it if you want.

 

Hello,

One can see the giant electrical wires and towers that lined the whole Lion’s Dragstrip on the Eastern border. From those towers to the edge of the actual return road to the orange timing tower, was a huge field planted and sowed to grow vegetables and other crops all year around. For a while, the fields were just dirt and left alone. The prevalent West winds from the ocean area made awful dusty conditions. But, the West winds also sent some moisture in the air for the dragstrip cooling and driving conditions.

Norm Cowdrey Austin Healy sports car. Ant eye view sitting on the return road… old Friday Art post…

From the time we moved to a house on the last street on the western edge of Long Beach, the railroad tracks from the harbor area was kind of a berm of sorts. We used to walk along the tracks toward the long dragstrip location. Our junior high school was near the largest of towers and from the railroad berm, we could see the racers while sitting on the tracks eating our lunch. We did walk across the plowed fields to the return road where we could see the race cars lined up ready to be towed or pushed back to the pits.

The view from our old junior high school campus road facing West towards the old dragstrip. Now, fenced off for liability, but one can still see the railroad cars moving on the tracks. The tall electrical grid wires still standing tall for all to see.

The dragstrip security could not do anything as long as we stayed on the plowed field. Eventually, it was too hot and dusty to keep standing there, despite the huge amount of drag race vehicles, just sitting waiting for their “ride” back to the pits.

Jnaki

Until the day the dragstrip closed and even to today, the huge field under those towers are empty. But, the area is now packed with cargo containers from the old 405 freeway entrance, down to the end of the old dragstrip on the old Lion’s Dragstrip property. YRMV

The red line indicates the old dragstrip. 6000 ft long x 1000 wide

But this is what is there, now:

 

Ooooo! I know what that chassis is!! What a great find. Do you have any history on the car? So many great details. Wonderful save.

 

Would that be an early Triumph chassis by any chance ?

 

A Charles Manning style chassis. Road and Track published a multi-part article written by Mr. Manning on how to build his race car in September-October of 1951.

 

This was just posted on Undiscovered Classics...

 

MG Midget

 

The car is a Midget, the ball's it takes to drive that are gigantic!

Pat

 

Big balls and short legs.

 

Without going through 59 pages of posts, have there been any other Midgets or Austin Healey Sprites that aren't quit as....um...radical or impractical?

I have somehow accumulated 3 early 60's Sprites.

Lynn

 

Local here many years ago had a ?Sprite? with a 283/T-10 combo, often thought HOW FUN!

 

I have always been fond of Bug Eye Sprites..!

 

@lake_harley
Sorry Lynn, I'm no help to you at all.

 

Something not quite so crazy.
1953 Woodill Wildfire.
1953 Red Ram hemi engine.
Manual floor shift transmission.
Fiberglass body.
This isn't a modified sports car with a V8 swap. It was built this way. Dealer built car in California. Very few produced. About a dozen are known to still exist.

 

Here's a nice little Sprite with an aluminum Rover V8.

 

IIRC, I posted some built starting page 8....

 

Lots of early hot rodders raced here and Palm Springs