Customs Half of the fun of owning and restoring the Car Craft Dream Rod

Half of the fun at least for me of owning a famous car from back in the day is collecting all the memorabilia connected with it. I bought the Car Craft dream rod (or what was left of it) back in 2005. And finished the restoration in 2009.
Here is what it looked like when I got it


I debuted it at the Detroit autorama in 09


And here it is today, inside of my house

 

The dream rod was used as their logo back then. Here’s a vintage Isca newsletter

 

October 63 newsletter with a feature on the car

 

Giant postcard

 

Amt model kits

 

Vintage show poster

 

show program

 

Sometimes you don’t even know something existed until you find it. These are pretty crappy blow molded toys of the dream rod

 

December 63 car Craft magazine

 

Isca information folder

 

Isca rule book

 

Trading card

 

Arcade card

 

3x3 photo and a promo picture of it’s second iteration the tiger shark

 

Hot wheels python that was modeled after this car

 

Caricature decal

 

Isca window decal

 

Friction powered toy

 

Haha, some of these things were bought at swap meets and others on Ebay. The ISCA folder, rule book and vintage copies of the Isca newsletter were given to me at the Detroit autorama in 09 when I showed the car there by one of its former owners. He went on to tell me that his girlfriend at the time told him "either that car goes or I do" He foolishly sold the car and she left anyway a little while later....

 

I had to find some pretty obscure parts for that car when I restored it. One was the rear window for a 57 Borgward Isabella town sedan, master brake cylinder for a 1959 Opel Record and a clutch pedal for same ( I never did find a clutch pedal so I had to make one using the brake pedal in the car as a model to somewhat copy). and the chassis for a 1952 Jowett Jupiter (Alum bodied 2 seater british sports car) because the guy I got the car from took it off its original Jowett frame and cut it up and threw it away. There were only 700 Jupiters ever built and only 200 were imported to the US. I bought a Jupiter parts car from a guy in Calif. The guy in the Jowett club that helped me find it told me " You are lucky that you contacted me instead of one of the stiff upper lip boys in England, They are probably already mad that that car used up one of their frames let alone 2..."

 

no sir it has not.... not only the fact that it doesn't have a VIN and only has headlights on one side, but the fact that it is extremely small inside, when I sit in it my head is stuffed so far into the headliner that I can't see out the windshield