Input Wanted: Gowjobs and Speedsters

PonchoRunner and I are having a friendly debate at the moment. He's planning to build a '20s-style race car from a '28 Marmon. I called it a "Speedster" an appelation to which he objected, claiming that a speedster is different from a racecar. He went on to define a speedster as a vehicle that has been stripped down for racing, but retains bodywork. Now to me, that's a gowjob.

To me this is a Speedster:



And this is a gowjob:



Now the first pic is in fact a race car, but where's the difference from a speedster? I say only in that a race car is on a race track and a speedster is on the road. So is a gowjob only a cheap car (Ford, Chevy, Plymouth)? To further confuse things, when do they become hot rods? 1938 or so when the V8s started becoming prominent at the Lakes?

Just a fun debate and we'd like to hear your input.

 

This should be a good thread! I think the Buick on top is a "Cutdown", nothing like adding confusion to a topic. I've never heard too many people use the term "Gowjob" must have just been a California term in the late 1920's. "Jalopies" were racing on the Dry Lakes in the late 1930's. A "Speedster" is a street driven vehicle.

 

i wasnt there but this is what i have read...

a Gowjob or a Soup-up was a home built car... more importantly, something built up with performance in mind. there was a heavy emphasis on creativity with the parts you had at your disposal. (pretty much what the hamb is about)

those names seem to have dropped from the media's vocabulary once hot rod was coined (post WW2).

so bigcheese... i believe BOTH those cars are gowjobs if they fit said criteria..

edit: anyone else want to take a stab at it?

 

The 1918 edition of Dyke's Automobile Encyclopediahad a few pages of info on converting a used car in to a speedster or runabout.

 

perhaps the terms speedster or gowjob were the same thing depending on where you from... or the style of the car itself.. ie. cut down doors to mimic a european sports car.... what was the guy racing etc?

pure speculation.

 

A "Speedster" was a roadster with cut-down bodywork, resembling a "real" race car, but retaining some of the more comfort/safety oriented features of standard street cars, like fenders (often smaller than standard, but still there), windscreen(s) and often a small trunk. Mercer called theirs a "Raceabout". These were the first sports cars, and were either factory/coach built, or a production car with an aftermarket body retrofitted after initial purchase of the vehicle. Some had minimal bodywork behind the seats with exposed gas tanks, while many ended up with torpedo or boat-tailed bodies.

All my research points to a "gow job" or "soup job" as being a low-line vehicle - usually a roadster - made up of the parts of several different vehicles and home-built speed parts. Most I've seen were based on Model T's and early Chevrolets. As most of these cars progressed, they either were discarded for newer, hotter iron or seem to have ended up with bodywork modified/fabricated for pure racing duty, whether it was for the lakes, a dirt oval, or both.

 

http://www.oldfordstuff.com/whatis/
check that out

i posted it on here quite a while back but seems somewhat fitting for this thread too

zach

 

Try the Northwest Vintage Speedsters website nwvs.org They seem to have a pretty good idea of what constitutes a "Speedster"

 

They all look like old cars to me. Why not buy a new Chevy and call it good?

 

Pete?...nevermind...what I remember is that hot rodders of the day called guys with POS cars 'jalopies'...kinda like the term 'rat rod' carries a negative conotation today...just my .02 cents...

 

Yep...warranty and all.
That T roadster HOT ROD is one of the coolest. Speedsters to me are purpose built racecars while gow jobs are indeed street cars made to race.

 

This is a speedster. That's all I know. (Oh, and that I want it.)

 

This may be a thread without a happy ending or any ending for that matter. Packard, Auburn, Duesenberg and Stutz all built production based speedsters for the street and they generally were boattails, although I believe Stutz built a roadster style in 28 and called it a Speedster. Then you had Frank Lockhart build his 16 cylinder Miller LSR car and they called it a Blackhawk speedster on occasion (although that might have been for advertising of their boattail & roadster which they sold in limited numbers at that time). Some of the stripped down cars seem to have been called speedsters and I have seen them referred to a gowjobs. I have always thought as a gowjob as a production car modified to go fast and the Speedsters to have been lets say more professionally built-but then my opinion is worth no more than most others. Cars generally purposely built for racing only were generally referred to as specials but I believe the AAA contest board had something in the rules that may have regulated that, but I don't want to lead this thread down another blind alley-Jim

 

In The Great Race we referred to speedsters as the cars that had all the bodywork except for some seats deleted from behind the cowl. We ran one with fenders and one without. The guys who had OG race cars had boattails or just plain race cars.

I've got a '26 Ford roadster that I want to do in the style of the road rally cars that we raced with. I'll hopefully have 21" wheels with wheel disks, some hop up parts on the oringinal motor, an overdrive, a Vee style windshield (hopefully brass) sidemount spares with a mirror on top, no bumpers, no hood sides, but a hood top held on with belts. I would call it a soup job before I would call it a speedster.

 

Cheese -

Do a search here. I posted a batch of speedster photos a few months back when the first annual Speedsters Reunion was held at Speedway Motors here in Lincoln, NE.

 

so how much can i post...huhhuhuhhuhhuh?????!!!!

 

more more more more more more more...

 

my personal favorite...a short wheel base 35J mercer

 

Hey guys,
I've got two questions on this subject,I'm 56 and from the midwest, and never heard the term gowjobs used, but I had read that gow was an early, pre-WW1 term for opium, and always wondered how it got connected to cars.
And how do you pronounce it, like cow with a g, or like go?
Also both of the examples are speedsters to me, my.02
thanks

 

My friend is selling this T. Real Morton and Brett body. Frontenac rocker arm OHV head. Restoration not complete, but I think $20,000.00 takes it.

 

that is really steep pricin! but definately good askin!

 

That's the direction I want PonchoRunner to take his Marmon, but he's got this strange fixation on wooden wheels.

 

Another voice…

There always seems to be speedsters for sale a lot cheaper than the stockers at the Model T Swap meet at Cerritos College.

Archie drove Veronica around in what I call a jalopy. That was part of his appeal, Reggie usually ended up with Betty (my FAVE) in his late model sports car.

On the Cd player, Slaid Cleves - Broke Down

 

First I have to say that this has been a phenomenal post. So much good information. Next, yes I would love to run the wooden wheels I have, just becuase I have them and well I am a poor college student who can't afford a set of wire wheels like the ones I would need. Keep the information coming, BigCheese and I are still debating the car!

 

I thought this was Jughead's car!

As for selling price, I'm not sure if you're suggesting that he'll be ruining the value of the car to build a speedster from it. He's just got a pile of parts, not enough to build another restored sedan (they're doing that too) but enough to build something lightweight and fun with a straight eight!

I always preferred Betty myself. She's the more down-to-earth type.

 

i went rooting through a barn a while back and found a lot of fun stuff, and enough stuff to get a good jump on building a good early speedster, but i will need alot more time before i even consider it as it will take "alot" of fabrication.

i love early race cars and speedsters, there is something so evocative about them. thier sheer power, or size, they evoke a time of daredevils, very similiar to what attracts many to the early days of socal and bonneville.

you read about how those early races were, they were fucking nuts. like in the original new york to paris the Itala breaks a wheel in siberia and a craftsman builds an entire new wheel out of a tree trunk with just an axe.

imagine going 100 mph down a dirt road with no brakes, bad steering, questionable wheels, skinny tires, and pedestrians on all sides.

i really enjoy the early days of hot rods but they don't hold a candle to the sheer balls that those guys had (it was just a different style, as these guys were open road racing, not on the confines of muroc, bonneville, or the local dirt track)

 

I have a question for Fur Biscuit....what kind of car is this???..I just picked up a hood that has a grill shell very similar but leans rearward more and has a honeycomb insert made of some kind of expanded metal........

The hood itself is aluminum and one peice but has a cast bottom rail that tilts the whole set-up towards the front of the car.......any ideas???

 

Fur Biscuit, This car #24 is the Hisso powered Larry Beals car. It was a factory GP Mercedes in 1908, sold to welthy Philadelphian Spencer Wishard and finished 4th in the first INDY 500 in 1911. He finished 15th in 1912 in the same car. Larry Beals removed the four cylinder engine and installed a Hispano- Suiza V-8 aircraft engine, same engine used in the WWI SPAD fighter, in the early 1920's. The car sold about 5 years ago and is home in Germany under restoration to its 1908 appearance. I got to see it before it left, really great piece of work, and well preserved all these years. UPDATE: 1/2/06 I knew I had this photo just couldn't find it when I first made this post. This is the Mercedes 12.8 liter car as it looked when new. It won the 1908 GP at Dieppe driven by Christian Lautenschlager at an adverage speed of 69MPH.