History Can someone explain turning racecars into street car?

I love old race cars, especially Gassers. But I don't see an issue with most being saved, and made street legal to make them more user friendly for the current owner. Of course that depends on so many variables that I can't say every one of them is a candidate. Some might be so historically significant that they should be either left alone, or properly restored to their racing glory days. But that's not true for every old car that went down a drag strip.
My '39 was an old hotrod that had seen some drag strip use, but other than the signs of what had been done to it previously, I had no other knowledge of the car's history. So I saw no reason to lose sleep over it, and no reason to try and recreate any past history. I built it the way I wanted it, and have no regrets about making it street legal, and my own style of build.
I think there's far too much concern today about tying to keep every bit of history on old hotrods. It's a good thing for some of them, but it's just silly to think every one of them needs to be returned to what it was once. If that was done for every old hotrod we'd all be driving restored cars that looked like they rolled off the assembly line, since that's truly how they were originally.

 

I think "Historically Significant" is the operative term here. I probably would not convert one of Ohio George's gassers to a streeter. But if I found my old '55 Ford I would convert it in a heart beat. The only significance it will ever have it to me and I don't amount to much in the racing (or even the hot rodding) world.

 

A race car is a disposable car, that is it can be wadded up and scraped at any given time. An historic race car is a rase car that no longer complies with the rules. One mans historic is another's scrap…

 

Frenchtown-The important word was replica-you're not cutting up a former Knoxville winner or an Indy 500 car-no history has been lost.And to those who say,I bought it,I do anything I want to it-just because you have the money,would you paint a beard on the Mona Lisa?

 

No but a Salvador Dali mustach would be hilarious

 

Pretty much every Vintage race car / vehicle built before 1970 would not be able to race or allowed on race Area, because of Rules & requirements, thus of NHRA/ IHRA & other sanctioning Bodys, in almost every form of racing
( Land & water) Exepts Out Law Tracks , even thats becoming harder to do ,
The Golden Day of Racing is No longer,
When it comes to 1964 cut off here with a fast car faster then 7:50 1/8 12:00 1/4

I consider dual purpose Race Rod

There are several here ,
Less then 440 cid
Tires 6-12 inch wide with tread ,
Threw mufflers ,
Steel & Not to many are Air dynamics,
(Bricks)
Street Driven
Drag on Strip & Street .
5:50-6:20 1/8
8:00-9:10 1/4

 

I'd have to say that Jimmy Six and his son have the right idea, That car morphed from drag car that was no longer competitive to land speed car that was hell for competitive until it retired from racing and went to a third known life as a great street car.
While it's Bonneville records are significant as soon as those records are broken by someone else the glory is gone and it is now a former record holder. In that respect it is still a former land speed record holder and you can't take that away full race livery or no. Beats the crap out of driving past where it might be sitting out in the weeds next to the woods minus engine and all race equipment waiting to rust into the ground as you see so many old race cars do.

Thinking back there are not all that many production cars turned race car that are so freaking famous or so important in the automotive world that turning them into a street car would be a total sacrilege. Another racer wouldn't bat an eye at making major changes to it to run it in a different class causing it to loose it's previous identity and no one gives much of a rip about that. Remembering a few cars in the 60's that ran in the stock classes, got switched to modified production class, then changed again to run in the gas class and a couple years later showed up as altered wheel base cars. I know of one in this area that pretty well did just that all with the same owner.

 

As long as someone's getting some use out of it in some form, it shouldn't matter in my opinion.

 

Restoring a racecar is a "photograph in time" [you choose the era that raises the most emotional interest]
Buying a racecar or a street car as a project is only a blank canvas.[do what you want with it]
With a racecar you need to research it's history, sometimes it's history is significant and sometimes it is questionable.
Vintage 60's road-racing is really bad [they'll restore a car from an oil slick on the pavement and call it "original"]
"Stolen Valor" is very common with these old warriors. Especially when they end up being like "George Washington's Axe" [having a replacement head, and a couple of new handles over the years]

Racecars of any significant history need provenance [just like art] . And if the provenance/history is significant it needs to be preserved [AKA being too scared to use it]
They end up owning you.........and you are just a caretaker of them.

But on the flip side , a vintage hotrod that was your grandfather's high school ride etc can be the same. [try explaining that to an insurance company]

Then there is movie cars....................... [usually junk!]

 

Let's be honest here, you guys seem to think that just because it raced, it should be saved. I agree that cars with a true racing pedigree should be preserved, but being one of the cars to participate in the first race at a particular track probably isn't cutting it. Comparing most of these old racers to the Mona Lisa is really stretching the friendship a bit. They need to be in the elite sphere of racing to warrant being kept for posterity. You can't take in all the stray kittens.

As for the rest, you should be glad that the actual car itself is being saved, even if it is as a street driven hot rod.

 

Besides big fun, you have the advantage of being able to drive it to the track, race it and then drive it home.

 

It’s about one’s passion. Robert J is into vintage racing. That’s his passion. When I was looking to restore a ‘32 Dodge PU, the site would snicker and laugh when someone bought “chassis parts” etc from a hotrodder. Then there’s the guys on forums/sites/clubs that won’t talk to you if you put a FH V8 into a Model A.
They all have a passion about what they are into.
Heck, we see it hear on theHAMB, “picked up this low mileage 265/283/327 from some guy going with an LS engine” right?
My babble aside, if I stumbled across an old race car, etc and the price was right and if I thought I could make “it mine” and drive it on the road, I’d do it. If I found out it had “historical value” then I’d flip it.
But I wouldn’t buy it hoping it had history, I’d buy it if the price was right for my needs.

 

Where I live, all it needs is a vin tag, some lights, a wiper and a windshield.
That’s not hard to do.
Doesn’t hurt much and sounds like fun

 

Related if is known regionally , nationally or world renowned, it should be saved or restored . Example ( Richie Evans, Richard Petty and similar ilk . Now this is one of many of my Dad’s race cars that are long gone but if I find a 1937 Chevy coupe then I will make a replica for the street. I want the fun of building it and driving it. I can get another coach or coupe body to race with .

 

There are no sacred cows in my shop.

 

Ya just know Brian is itching to tub his Vette

 

We don’t need a racist thread on the H.A.M.B.!

 

Some very interesting takes here, for me this is about replicating and prrserving histroy, building cars just as they were built in perod.

The same goes for finding an old car, If I were to find an old race car, drag car, hot rod, or custom it needs to be preserved. I would only fix what needed to be fitted or that which was unsafe.

What deems a car historically significant? The Owner, Driver, Wins, Track Championships? Inovations? Is a car raced by a hot shoe anymore historically significant then a car raced by a low budget guy who only made the feature thourgh the consi every week?

They both put cars on the track every week, and the hot shoes often had help parts, tires,money were the low budget guys were on there own and worked just as hard maybe even harder to keep their cars going.

You have got to have the little guys just as much as the big timers

This was local car ran out of Windham NY and was owned by Lyle Sokoll a Ford dealer. It beach and several other NASCAR convertible from 1957-1959. (washed a way in a flood in the late 1960s or early 1970s and crushed)

It driven by George Baumgardner and latter Bill Wimble. Baumgardner was a very sucessful driver here in New York state as was Bill Wimmble who also was a NASCAR national Sportman (Now Xfinity series)

The car never won and the drivers aren't as famous as "Fireball" Roberts, Curtis Turner, or Joe Weatherly but does that mean it has no historic significance?

It ran as a Sportsman out of a the Warnerville Garage (Warnerville NY near Cobleskill about 45 miles west of Albany) whitch was a Kaiser-Frazer dealer.

It had the bigger Kaiser-Frazer engine, they were using the car as an advertisement to show the power of the Kaiser-Frazer engine.

 

I wouldn't cut up any built in period car cut up and changed whether it is a race car, hot rod or custom they are history and needs to be perserved as a time capsule to show how these car were really built.

But it hasn't been perserved it has been changed from what it was.

 

I'd turn an old dirt track car into a street driven version in a heartbeat, and never give it a second thought.
Back in the mid 60s, we had 5 or 6 dirt tracks with in 100 miles of here, one was just outside of town. Nearly every one of those old cars were crushed, or modified beyond anything they were suppose to represent, or were left outside to rot away. With most of those old race cars, only the color, the paint and the number is remembered by most people. There are 4 local cars that ran at our local track back at the end of the coupe era, that have been restored back to their last on track version. There is no place around here any of those cars can race, and only one or two tracks where they could even make a parade lap at intermission, and that better be a pretty slow lap. Those cars are nothing more then a static display that are allowed to be displayed only about 4 times a year one time at each track, and one time at two different "historic" car displays. Those painfully restored cars are seen by very few people. What a shame.

There is even 2 different vintage race car clubs in this area that still race "vintage" cars, one club is geared towards the 60s -80s late models, and the other is pre 50 coupes. Any car that runs at any of those events has to meet current safety standards, which means all the cars running in those clubs have been highly modified from their original history, if they even had a real history.

My coupe is a replica, that doesn't bother me in the least. It has been updated with modern comforts, I'm ok with that as well, I drive it a lot. If you don't like it, you don't need to look at it.

What I've found from driving my car through 17 states and 90,000 + miles over the last 13 years is that nearly everyplace you stop for food, or gas, or a break of any kind, the car brings back pleasant memories to most people that see it. They nearly always share when a grandfather, and uncle, a brother, or a friend used to race at the local track, with a big smile on their face. People love this stuff, except for a few that feel the need to be a critic about it. With them I smile, nod my head, and leave. I figure at least it gave them a chance to feel important, and got them thinking about something in their past.

People being able to see something from their past that brings them joy (especially something that drives up and parks, then they can watch it drive away), is more important the it being a perfect restoration from its past that has to be hauled everyplace and then parked for display.

If I would have found an old dirt track body when I found this one, I may have touched up the paint and put it together on this current chassis. The car was purposely built to remind people of a better time in their past, and for me to enjoy driving it while I'm sharing it with them. Gene

 

driving one of these on the street sounds fun

 

Around here there are plenty of old race cars and not that many tracks.

Most old race cars can be made street legal (at least wink wink nod nod "street legal") easily without altering them much and that is a way they can at least move under their own power and be seen... versus sitting up for months at a time until the stars align for a track day... if they can even pass tech in as-raced survivor condition.

 

I am basically a one or two car at a time guy. With that said I have little interest in preserving someone else's history. To me that's a job for the guys with 50 car collections and the resources to do so. There are many historic cars out there that truly do deserve preservation but that doesn't mean every rot box dragged out of a fence line deserves a restoration and preservation just because somebody painted a number on the door and ran it around a track a couple times. The allure of turning a race car into a street car to me is that you get to enjoy the work you put in for more than a few seconds at a time (in the case of old drag cars). And who doesn't want to brag to their buddies that their hotrod was an old drag car from xx year and ran at this track and that. Just a fun part of the hobby.

 

Not really. All it takes on a Sprint is a shortie glide, a mini starter/battery, simple chassis adjustments and some mini removable lights. A historical document with matching vin. Plexiglass windshield. Wing and mufflers are optional. Been there done that.

 

@Robert J. Palmer that's very interesting. We had a Kaiser-Frazer dealer here in town. I have a bunch of their old receipt books, envelopes and other stationery I picked up years ago. So the car has the 226 in it. Does it have any speed equipment on it like an Edmunds head or intake?

 

Fantastic! This is the essence of hot rodding. Rapid transit for one person. I assume this is not a famous car. What better way to enjoy it without the expense of a vintage racing series. While I agree with Robert in principle, I would apply his standard to cars that are somehow significant to racing history. Billy Bob's crudely built street stock that never finished in the top five doesn't qualify as far as I'm concerned.
Gotta confess I am in love with your car. How many people follow you home just to look at it or try to buy it? I would.

 

This is my old 57 Chevy. They guy that's having it restored bought it from me. In this situation it's a 210 Sport Coupe and I think they only built about 23,000 of them.

 

A car with enough provence that restoring it would devalue it is already in a collection, or there is a collector who will cut a check for it. In all reality it's like the Hirohata Merc or the Bullit Mustang.Cool, definitely a want, but what the hell do you do with it . Where do you draw the line. The old B. C. Willys Gasser is on the street now, it's lucky to survive.

 

Guy I know bought this to put on the street

it’s titled and been driven. He planning to give it away He started a FB page for street driven race cars.
these 2 are street legal

this one is as well. Former circle track car.
Was drilled hard during a figure 8

this one I guess was a newer build. Was a former bomber car.

Re-skinned nascar.
Street driven. Hard.
to answer the question why, I guess I don’t know. The real question is why not.