Never said I didn't like Porche cars in general, although IMO, the nose job done on this one falls into the clutches of the old saying:"Just because you can, doesn't mean you should". The whole point of my original comment is that a fat fender Ford with IFS is just as, if not more, traditional, regardless of who did the nose job.
It is kinda funny, there's been more Pantie rustling over fit's/doesn't , Guy's if it's not your cup of tea, grab a beer an check out the next thread, Remember, You don't Have to post if you don't approve, Unless at gun point...I could be bias here...
MII front ends have never been accepted as traditional on this forum, no matter how you want spin it.
I had a lot of fun this weekend meeting many of Dean's fans who said so many nice things about the Karrera. I've tried my best to remain faithful to Dean's vision for the car as I've spent the last eight years restoring it. I particularly like the period Lucas headlights that I installed in the Porsche in the weeks leading up to the event to capture the flavor of the time. I cleaned and reinstalled the turned aluminum panels in the door jambs that Dean made since I admitted to him five years ago that I hadn't had time to put them back on the car before its last show. His response was cl***ic - "I won't tell anybody if you don't" - but I can now admit it to the world. One of the favorite stories of the weekend was from someone who saw the car in the little magazines in the 1959-61 period and said it influenced him to buy a Porsche 356. Some time soon after he bought it he was so distracted admiring the very shapely rear end of a girl walking on the sidewalk that he drove into the back of the car he was following and smashed both his headlights. At the body shop the next day he asked the body man if he knew of Dean Jeffries' Porsche. The body man's answer was "Yes, but before you even ask, the answer is NO - we are not doing that." He was so thrilled to finally see the car in person it had us all enjoying the moment. Pete Brock even stopped by to see the Porsche as he knew Dean when he was painting the first Cobra for Carroll Shelby. He did say that the roof scoops weren't in the optimal position to extract the air in the ****pit but they should work pretty well even as they are.
And to throw another wrench into the old hot rod/sports car debate how about this Pontiac 389 powered 1960 Bug Eye Sprite I helped a friend of mine build back in 1970? It had a 4-speed turbohydramatic transmission, narrowed Pontiac rear axle with shafts by Vic Hubbard and Corvair coil springs at all four corners. With a 2.65 rear ratio it was geared to exceed 140 mph. (about 120 is as fast as we ever had the guts to take it.) As a fan of traditional hot rods, sports cars, Land Rovers, Eurotrash, restored cl***ics and basically almost anything with wheels and a motor I've always felt that my Porsche was a great mix of the Custom and Sports Car worlds with some hot rod genes thrown in - remember it was built in George Barris' shop and was there on the day of the 1957 shop fire. You can't get better hot rod provenance than that.
Great thread! It's amazing how narrow-minded some people are. It's funny how European cars are completely unacceptable to some... unless of course, they're Anglias, Fiats, or Bantams, or Triumph, BSA, or Norton motorcycles, or... Euro cars weren't common, but they certainly had an impact on the custom and hot rod world. It wasn't common for people to buy brand new cars and deliver them to customizers, like Watson, but we all know of several examples where it happened. No one could afford to do that in the same way they couldn't afford Cadillacs or foreign cars to customize...
If that worked both ways, I would be happy with it and would willingly ignore posts with which I hold a differening opinion, as long as those who feel like IFS under a fat fender car is OK and all that is done is to ignore it if you don't agree. But if you say too much about IFS conversions especially a MII type, the moderators don't ignore it, they delete it. And that ain't a 2 way street my friend. Last OEM production of a car with MII susp. was 1978, and that's 38 years ago! There's all kinds of later model steering gear, engines, transmission, both manual and automatic, rear axles and brakes that weren't produced OEM till AFTER 1978 in use. Maybe someone can dream up a rational explanation for this??????????
Cmon, seriously, it doesnt get ANY funnier that republican presidential candidates comparing **** size on national television!!. I never thought I would EVER see that, you just cant make that **** up!!
Dave, I like you and respect you, I really do. And I do get the subtext behind what you are saying, BUT I can field that one without even breaking a sweat, and I dont even have to dream. The cut-off here is supossed to be 1964 (I think, it changes so goddam often I cant keep up anymore) Right? And Mustang II front ends first appeared under Pintos in '71, right? And Dean Jeffries Porsche was on the Cover of R&C in 1959. Nuff said. I was also born in '61, so I am not as old as Dave, but I was around the motorsports scene literally from the day I was born, and in the early mid sixties, the lines between the hot rod guys, USAC guys and the road-race guys became so blurred, the line almost didn't exist for a while. Dan Gurney raced the lakes and had a chopped 5 window, Dave McDonald started out in the So-Cal drag racing scene, Chuck Daigh was totally involved the the lakes scene when he was young, Phil Remington was working for Carroll Shelby, and Doane Spencer was at Hollywood Sports Cars. Hell, NASCAR was sanctioning drag races, USAC was sanctioning road-races and stock car races, and the FIA was sanctioning drag races in England. For a brief glorious period, it was all one big happy family. Just pick up a Hot Rod from 1960-1965.
Well George, I appreciate your comments and believe me I also did a lot of reading about road racing, wasn't much of it in those days down here in the Deep South, so about all I could do about road racing was read about it. Drag racing was going strong here in the 50s and of course the South is well known as prolly the birthplace of stock car racing, but that was on ovals. As I've said repeatedly in this thread, I like sports cars and that isn't the issue I'm raising. But I guess we're going to have to "agree to disagree" on this one, cause I ain't beating on this horse no more!
Well, and to be fair, I think the real crossover between the hot rod guys and the road-race guys in the sixties was somewhat a west-coast thing,
The first Grand Prix road race in the USA was in Savannah, GA. Plus there is that track in Florida you may have heard of called Sebring? The South has a long history of road racing especially in the years right after WWII. I knew a few drivers that raced several times a month at tracks all over the southeast in the 1950's. When I was growing up we spent a lot of time at Road Atlanta but that was in the late 60's and early 1970's. Plus those guys like Junior Johnson, Curtis Turner and their contemporaries did their fair share of "road racing' outrunning the revenuers..... Plus don't forget Max Balchowsky's Old Yeller cars http://oldyeller2.com/
Rod & Custom article in October 1959 - It was also called Silver Satin and Kustom Karrera in other magazine articles.
The October 1959 R&C feature article on the car was en***led "Maltese Masterpiece". If you go back and read @Jive-Bomber's original post (i.e., his March 15th 2016 TJJ Blog), you will notice he references @Ryan's January 16th 2009 TJJ Blog about the car and its appearance in the Oct. '59 R&C article (see Maltese Masterpiece). EDIT: D'oh! ... I type to slow ... @Karrera already beat me to it!
Dean Jeffries Porsche will be at the Goodings Auction at Pebble Beach next month if any of the west coast Hambers want to come by and see it. I've reluctantly decided that it needs to go to a new caretaker after 45 years and I figured it needed to come "home" to California.
The Jalopy Journal
