[ QUOTE ] Great concept but limited use (one seater). [/ QUOTE ] It's kinda like having a bobber. Who cares if anyone rides with you...it's all about attitude and performance.
[ QUOTE ] i can see where your going with this ryan (i hope) especially with the back stuff...i`m waiting for the good old british national health to provide me with an epidural [sp] to my spine so they can put the discs back where they belong...anyway back to the cars..there was a an `A` roadster built over here for a guy named Jim Pantal that pretty much met the criteria the car to me always seemed more streamlined than a normal `A` roadster even though its a pretty close representation of an original `A` ( this is a hand formed `clone` from aluminium )check out the photos .....my next statement is probably pure bunkum but i`m gonna say it anyway.....colour...if you check out the shots that ryan put up here they are all light in colour if not silver.... to me silver makes a car more streamlined more aerodynamic than any other colour.....put 2 merc slk`s side by side one red and one silver which looks more streamlined....like i said i might be talking crap but look next time you see a silver car....heres the `A` i was talking about....full riley running gear monkey [/ QUOTE ] You're right Monkey, if you notice all new concept cars seem to be silver. It's fast.
[ QUOTE ] You're right Monkey, if you notice all new concept cars seem to be silver. It's fast. [/ QUOTE ] Honda paints all their prototypes Silver, (and repaint other colors too to test them) It's like some kind of "Standard" to judge the design with I think. So all the body ideas get judged without color prejudices playing maybe? The MB cars are all silver because that's Germany's Racing color. Ferarris are red because Italy's color is red. USA is White and Blue, (most throw in a little red)
[ QUOTE ] The MB cars are all silver because that's Germany's Racing color. [/ QUOTE ] A lot of people think that, but it is not. The German national Racing color is White. But it became Tradition for the Germans to race Silver cars after a Mercedes failed Tech for being a couple of pounds over the legal limit. So The MB team stripped the paint off theyr cars and raced them in bare Aluminum...
One of our regulars at the shop has been planning a car like that Merc for many years, he is retired and always rides alone anyway.........I showed him this thread and he got VERY wound up!
I think this car started in the right direction, could have gone alittle further to get where I think you are going...
Here is a timeless style. not a great picture.. this one was chopped slightly with a custom leather and ? (snake, alligator or other animal) interior. again from the same shop..
My take on traditional is homebulit Saturday mornings in the garage making it work, thats the stisfaction in the whole thing, Hard work and friends makes a better hot rod than writing checks
hoooooray!!! Ryan i like the way your mind works on med's, take another and start typing. seems like you hit a cord with the guys here on the board and sure as hell have with me with this one. i don't think there is a person alive that is a car nut that hasn't dreamed of designing and building a one off car of their own. And to those ends i am no different. the 30's cars have so much appeal to me, the bugatti's, cord, dusenburgs, and my favorite the 35 auburn boattail speedster, wow. over the years i like most everyone else have been thru countless scrap yards and the like, and have seen a couple of fenders here, a hood there etc etc. with just about the right shape to fit my idea of a cool curvy, swoopy fendered car, along with all sorts of unusual mechanicals that at least i think would be neat to work with and intergrate into an unusual car. engines for example, take the straight eights, talk about a long nose car, with multi carbs, side draft and a bunch of header pipes exiting, at least i think it would be cool. probably get kicked in the balls for this one, but the Z motors with there inline 6 overhead cams, and at least in the original cars look huge, might be cool in a rod, maybe? i got to get this damn old 55 done and one the road first, by the time i do there probably won't be any affordable iron to work with, so will probably have to build the chassis from scratch, body it with hand laid up glass, and put a geo metro motor in it.. yuk!!! bob g
Performance gives a car reason to exist. It's why I like the "Specials"...the sport rods...the Brooklands cars and anything else of that ilk. The Doane Spencer Roadster we all know and love is NOT the same car Doane Spencer intended it to be you know... HE had visions of a racer in his fertile mind, but it was never completed. The car was later reassembled, by the guy he sold it to, into the vehicle we know today. Appreciation of early racecar engineering is more TRADITIONAL than any flat black, red wheeled DEATH rod can ever hope to be!!! It's where the ORIGINAL Rodders received THEIR inspiration. Bill
I've always been a big fan of the 30's Autounions. The mechanical aspect... the complex 12 and 16 cylinder engines sitting mid-chassis, and then there was those incredible body shapes... made for some of the most interesting cars of that period. I think back then, car designers were mechanical engineers by trade, only because it allowed them access to their true love, working with shapes. Look at old Millers... even their drivetrain parts, the suspension arms and driveshafts.. were beautiful to look at. They were funtional first and foremost, but they snuck design in there when they could.
[ QUOTE ] hoooooray!!! Ryan ... probably get kicked in the balls for this one, but the Z motors with there inline 6 overhead cams, and at least in the original cars look huge, might be cool in a rod, maybe? ... bob g [/ QUOTE ] Like this? Same red Model A I posted earlier. This 240-Z engine and a '51 Ford flat 6 fit in it.
[ QUOTE ] Steve Moal has flirted with all of this and his craftsmanship is amazing I hear... [/ QUOTE ] The earlier black cars were much better designs than the red one pictured. And a cooler guy with knowledge of both hot rods and Euros does not exist. He is a super "regular" guy who does not talk down to anyone.
Ryan, I love that first MB you have pictured, I would love to do something like that but more in the old yeller vein. Keep those big pontoons with blowin crank driven ardun under that long hood. No frills such as trim like the Delehaye. Maybe with Duvall windsheild.Building that body would be kick ass! Build a buck, get some 3003 h14 .040 and GO TO FUCKING TOWN!!! Putting pontoons on Dr.J's hot rod with the 37 truck shell would be cool with a boat tail. I have always liked the Curtis Indy style roadster thats a two seater. I think there was a pic of it here a while ago. Too wide for the pontoons though. Excellent thread!
Ryan touched on something interesting here regarding guys like Cole who are super talented. Why not build some Coach Cars? You know, cars that are totally one-off, hand hammered works of art. Swoopy, beautiful art. They could still be traditional w/ flatties, old style interiors, etc. They'd just be totally unique. Basically, what a skilled metal worker would have done back then. I've got a couple of old little pages w/ this type of stuff in it. Pretty nifty. Oh, and when you all hop on this bandwagon and want to unload your Deuces for cheap let me know
Man it's late and this thread is too interesting to pass - so I hope this ends up being semi-intelligible.... I won't feign to be a suck-up and pretend that I want to build a car like Ryan. In fact I don't want to. I wan't to build a car like Moriarity, but that's another post subject. In the interest of conversation though I will say that the early racers pictured above are inspiring as hell. Think about the times man. Cars were like lunch boxes on wheels and then there were these land missles. They must have been like UFOs to onlookers. Those designs are so above our heads that they would be concidered "modern" if you slapped some 20"x15" inch rims and rubber on them!! And as far as trying to figure out what kind of car Ryan has rattling around in his head - that could take a team of designers.........let's go!!! Thinking in terms of a 32 or a Model A turned sleek racer, well I think there have been some decent examples posted already, but they still miss the mark. The Mercedes' are so slender and they "flow" differently. If we use a Duece as our base - we're going to have to section the hell out of it. Let's face it, the siloette of a duece is similar to that of a barn......but it's a cool barn man, don't get me wrong. I need to sleep on this one.....
Ryan, I hear ya talking. Ive often considered the El Caballo to be a type of car to be mimiced, big v8 yet a road racer. Take a look at this guys work for variations on a theme. Metal shaped body More from the same shop
[ QUOTE ] [ QUOTE ] Or worse yet it would be some fuckin HUGE monstrosity like Jay Lenos BigHogmobile! [/ QUOTE ] Just think, you could stay up late every night for years, dreaming of something new and groundbreaking, then have half the members of the HAMB calling you a useless asshole turkey-brained fuckwit the first time you show the car Now THAT is motivation enough for anyone to build just another boring-black-trad-32-with-a-flaphead [/ QUOTE ] If some people don't hate your art work, (and these cars are artwork) you didn't push any envelopes orwork outside the mediocrity box at all.
I guess you are talking about the real roots of hot rodding. In Europe they didn`t build hot rods. They built race cars. Hot rodding evolved from the poor kids trying to mimic the race cars using what they had at hand at a very limited budget. Very often they raced hopped up flathead v8s with great sucsess. Nothing beats busting a Bugatti with a home built "ford v8 special".
Trends and fads are continually changing and the wheel is continually re-inventing itself. I think the "rat rods" are a knee jerk revolt to the high dollar billet trailer queens that rods morphed into. Who knows, maybe in another ten years we will all be building goofy shit like those old Barris toilet and pool table rods. I saw an early fiftys Mecedes roadster with the prewar American lines, that couldn't muster much of a bid on ebay after running twice and I thought how cool it would be with the drive train from a 500SL or one of those old leviathon 6.9 motors. Those fiftys and early 60s indy type cars have to be the sexiest roadsters of all time as the photos in this thread show. How about a street version of an early 60s fronty or an old Curtis sprinter. I have even thought of a street version of a 70s sprint car as these are still laying around and can be had for cheap. Or better yet one of the 70s champ cars as they last ran at places like Oswego up into the 80s. After all if you take the traditional hot rod back to it's roots they were basically emulating the race cars of the day.
Here is a car I built a few years ago and is still one of my all time favorites. So much has been written about these cars because of the great story involved but also because of the timeless style these cars exhibit. As many times as I see a real one or even a reproduction, I still get exhited. Some things never change.... and never should
[ QUOTE ] Here is a car I built a few years ago and is still one of my all time favorites. [/ QUOTE ] That's a beautiful car, fuel pump. I love the Cobras as well & damn near bought a Factory Five car - neat concept. Not quite as accurate as an ERA or the other high-dollar cars, but well engineered & affordable. I still keep my '83 GT w/all the upgraded parts as a driving donor! Maybe one day...
THIS is why I like the HAMB. Serious, intelligent, mature discussion about traditonal engineering, design, form and function. NOT some senseless drivel over some POS cartoon car or groupie fashion statement. Traditonalists follow many disciplines, whether they be automobiles, aircraft, trains, architecture or even furniture. Thanks for the leadership, Ryan. Keep it up. Hope you get to feeling better (or maybe not, if this is the result)
[ QUOTE ] THIS is why I like the HAMB. Serious, intelligent, mature discussion about traditonal engineering, design, form and function. NOT some senseless drivel over some POS cartoon car or groupie fashion statement. Traditonalists follow many disciplines, whether they be automobiles, aircraft, trains, architecture or even furniture. Thanks for the leadership, Ryan. Keep it up. Hope you get to feeling better (or maybe not, if this is the result) [/ QUOTE ] i second that. great thread, cool topic and no drama. keep em coming, i've saved just about every pic posted so far. i love this stuff!!
I've been thinking about this post for the last few days... I've been stuck in limbo with my hot rod project for years now. I gathered some decent drive train parts but I've been agonizing about the body forever. I'd like to build a hot rod but I want something original so I can't decide what the hell to do. I've almost plunked down my money lots of times but didn't because I felt like I was compromising. I know I want to run a 3/4-full race flathead, that's about it. Every time I build the car in my head I end up with some crazy assed combination of lakester/Road-Racer/dirt-tracker/Street Rod. So that brings me to the problem that relates to this post. I keep coming back to making my own body/frame design. But when I envision the completed product in my mind, it doesn't feel right. I think I know now why. It comes down to balancing that "purpose-built race car" feel with the road car reality. Take the Dick flint roadster as an example... As far as I'm concerned, that's about as far as you can go with the racifying of a streetcar with old ford parts. It has decent proportions, it looks fast and no-nonsense, it's about as uncluttered as you can get, and you can drive it anywhere, which should be the ultimate goal for you if you are truly going to build a car that fit's in anywhere with traditional American Hot Rods. And that's something else to remember/honor... One of the major reasons we're into this it that it's a Uniquely American endeavor. Hot Rodding is part of our roots as Americans. That's why the Europeans and Japanese love it too. They are probably much better versed in racecar design than we are but the choose to build a rickety Model A for the style, feel, and history that it represents. Now take a car like the Miller/Olds Streamliner... It's about as beautiful as you can get for an American "purpose-built race car." (Be honest, you think Old Yeller is butt-ugly too right.) It is perfectly formed for what its intended use is and it apes the MB's pretty well for a Yank. I think the thing is fucking gorgeous but I think you'd look like a big dork driving it on the street even if you could get it truly road-worthy. The problem is that in order to build a car that is respectably close in design and beauty to the MB racecars, you pretty much have to build an actual purpose-built racecar. If you don't go far enough the car will give you away as a poseur. But if you go all the way it will look about as at home on the street as a 32 roadster would at the Indy 500. It would almost have to be as over-the-top as Leno's beast to pull it off. I like that thing by the way. It is a purpose built car and that shows. It was intended to shock and it does. So I think it all comes down to the whole "Purpose-Built" thing. It's a single-mindedness of vision. If you want to race that comes through in your design. If you want a street Rod, that comes through also. You can share design elements but as soon as you do, you start to compromise. That's not necessarily a bad thing but if you get too close to one extreme or the other the feeling that you car embodies will be confused. You'll have a "streetified/'detuned' (what a fucking awful word!) Race car" or a "raced out cartoonish hot-rod." I won't even talk about trying to build a car that looks like a respectable facsimile of a 30's/40's racecar with some coil-overs, and budnicks. All of which I put forth as the central challenge, not a roadblock. Some people pull it off pretty well. The Lattin/Offy modified for example (will somebody please tell him how flaming-gay the new air-brushed flames look on it) pulls it off quite well. Rogue's new RPU kicks ass although I think it's a little low for my tastes but I still like it. Also the 49-51 Chevy speedster that used to be in West-Coast Scrap metal, that has the Jag 6 in it and the buick hood for the tail, gets pretty close (it will be done one day, I have faith). But for me, in all the times I've built my dream car, the end product hasn't quite worked for me. At this rate, my kids will take the maiden voyage in my car to spread my ashes at Muroc. There's something to be said for a Model-A hot rod...
Cool Pic's NealinCA, a bunch of us were at a show a few weeks ago, and saw some similar early race cars. Something like that with a saltlake stance and flathead power could be really it, if done right.
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