Hi, Anyone know anything about these? Dont have one , dont want one , just looking to further my knowledge !!!
i see them in ads from the 50s and early 60s after that i dont know .any of you PA members know where they were in ****ord and what happened to them ?
I know just a little about it, although I have never seen one or heard of anyone using one. In a story on Ed Almquist in one of the rod magazines several years ago, it was claimed this was the first fibergl*** 32 Ford roadster ever offered for sale and probably the first fibergl*** hot rod body ever. It was offered at the start of the fibergl*** era in the mid 50s. $179 would have been a lot of money then for a one-piece body of dubious accuracy when original bodies were still around.
ive met ed almquist a few times...he seems to be a great guy...if you read his book "HOT ROD PIONEERS" it tells about all the things he has done and also is a who's who of anyone who was anyone....i do beleive he was the first to produce a fibergl*** roadster..(been a while since i read it)...when i talked to him he was working on reproducing his 2 into 1 intake peices ..he said they worked well because of the venturi effect that the 2 to 1 set-up created...he also said about the possibility of reproducing his heads and intakes...if anyone remembers spark-o-matic...that was him...his book is well worth checking out...i bought a copy and brought it home and my dad went right away and got himself his own copy... thats all i can think of right now zach
I've got an Almquist catalog from my high school days laying around. Makes for some interesting reading now. Sure wish I could find some of the speed equipment at those prices now.
I've looked at that ad since the fifties--I have lots of old speed catalogs and mags showing it, but I don't think I've ever seen or heard of a car using it! I wouldn't be surprised if there's a million of them sitting untouched in garages and ba*****ts right where some 17 year old in 1961 finally gave up trying to figure out what to do with it and went out to buy a '55 Chevy. That thing was probably the first significant hotrod fibergl*** part. The car always shown in the ads is, I think, Neumann's 1931 roadster, not even a deuce. N built the car in the midwest, then moved and was editor of R&C for a while. I saw the car recently in a list of "Where are they now?" famous rods. I've got a '62 Sparkomatic catalog hidden under my desk right now...Hmmmm, work is a lot like "Algebra 1" was in '62, yes? Anyway...$161.50, "STRONG-AS-STEEL", 45lbs, "sides are smoothed in"--see, it's a feature, not a bug. Smoothing probably happened when they discovered body #1 wouldn't come out of the mold.
The Jalopy Journal
