Remember the restored race car orig. found folded in half & buried on a farm?

Milt Robson?

Cool thread, very interesting stuff and inspirational to the rest of the world struggling to finish a car that now should seem to have been "not too bad off" to begin with.

 

Does anyone have a link to any more info about the Auto Union cars? I started to read an article about them in a doctor's office about five years ago, had to leave, and never got to finish it. It has been bugging me ever since.

 

Zora Duntov was quoted at a show as saying "There were 5 Gran Sport Corvettes built, and all 7 of them are here today!" (Don't know if I have the numbers right, but there were two more than originally built)

Brad[/QUOTE]

I like that thats as funny as my dad telling me about my grandfather working at the stroh brewery in detroit. Dad says grandpa was drunk for 5 outa the 4 years he worked there
Dave

 

Repops,Rebuilds,Recreations & Restorations.
I worked in a shop that specialized in Antique Autos-Horseless Carriages. Many of these cars have been rebodied over the 100+ years of survival, Does this make a diffrerence?-Not really. The car itself has survived & can be enjoyed for many more years to come.
Not too long ago,there was a big stink on here re: the Bill Warth-Stu Hilborn car.
This car was seen in many incarnations. Was banger powered, rear suspended, solid mounted,crashed & was rebodied by the "Famous Eddie Miller" @ the end of the 47 season. It had evolved, then was sold,raced & scrapped and an intake that bears Eddie Millers name survives.
Does this make Jim Lattin"s recreation with one of the most famous (Stu Hilborn) pioneers help in our industry a fake I think not! This is now "the car", A continuation for all of our eyes & minds to absorb. Pictures of old stuff are bitchen, but like the speed equipment that I "continue" with, it seems like people are wanting aged parts for the sake of saying that they have something old,even though It may not even be useable.
Check out the Golden Gate Bridge sometime. Every bit has or is being replaced due to corrosion. I drive over it all the time It sure does look& fell like the same bridge that I have driven over most my years. Is it a fake No-It's just being maintained & retrofitted,but it is still the same bridge.
I personally like the fact that cars like Stu's are becoming a visual reality & the fact that our children can learn from us & be able to appreciate the amount of work it took to "continue" this quest for knowledge.

 

GREAT thread!! Damn Choprods that car is WAY worse than the one Clark just bought!!!!!! Any more up to date pics of it???

 

My deepest apologies for spreading misinformation. I hate it when others do it (and usually bitch about it), so shame on me!

 

I was chatting with a guy a while back that owned a hauling company. And he said that I farmer outside of Kansas City called him up to bury an old car for him. It was Mustang fastback (early 60's?), and his son had died in it, so he wanted it buried in a field. He opened the barn and it was "mint" with less than 5g miles on it. So they "drug" it to the field and started to dig the hole with a bulldozer and the farmer came over and asked them to drive over the car so that it would never be able to be restored. They guy said that he almost teared up while driving over it and hearing all the crushing metal and glass. But, that is what the farmer wanted and he paid good money to have the work done.

What ever happened to the 30's car that was along the side of the highway in California that some "HAMBer's" were pulling out piece by piece? It was a couple of years back.

Chris Nelson
Kansas

 

well sort of a thread hijack , this is my favorite found in a barn and restored story,the big old futureliner, these things are ridiculous in person, how big they are,http://www.futurliner.com/index.html

 

I want to see some progress pics of this.....

 

"Check out the Golden Gate Bridge sometime. Every bit has or is being replaced due to corrosion. I drive over it all the time It sure does look& fell like the same bridge that I have driven over most my years. Is it a fake No-It's just being maintained & retrofitted,but it is still the same bridge."



This is a crappy analogy. Very little of the bridge has ever been replaced.

Carry on.

 

The Futurreliner reminds me of something from a "Simpson's" episode.
But cool nonetheless.

end hijack...

 

That was Chopperlance.com (cant remember his HAMB name) that drug the 34 3w out of the canyon.

 

I'd like to agree with that, but not all cars have a writen race history, and some owners never pass on all the details about the cars. Years ago AACA saw that there was a problem with the race car class, and now all cars have to have their history proven to a commettie before they can be put on display. If you found a Kurtis Kraft with an Offy, or a Type 37 Bugatti, or closer to the HAMB home a salt covered '32 Ford roadster, you could paint it up to look like any car you wanted to. Problem pops up when the owner of the "True and Documented" car shows his. I sure don't want to take anything away from the efforts of Jim Lattin and the Stu Hilborn "Clone" but it is NOT "THE" car, that is a rusty ball somewere. The current value of cars has caused a lot of history to be rewrited or stretched. Unrestored, or restored originals are a great link to the past, but a well built clone that is stated to be a clone is a great link to history as well.

 

i guess i got a little off the path on this post. i was dealing with a couple of cars this weekend, one a very original unmolested untouched car (historically unimportant), one a restoration using period parts, but not all from that car but built up from a collection of parts and the last was an incredible $100k recreation (many original parts were thrown out infavor of new "replacements") and a debate ensued over which car was more original.

i just feel, that people need to be honest and straight forward about what they build, don't call it 100% original if you replaced a whole bunch of stuff on it w/ recreations. (just like the chevelle...)

and of course, with race cars, stuff broke and continues to break, and were the subject of development and were changed over time. which is why many race cars are restored to look like they did at a certain point in thier past.

and recreations are very cool, cause you get a chance to see stuff that no longer exists, and especially it is cool to see stuff that is period perfect, or a faithful reconstruction going flat out. or just standing still.
so now back to the fun, anyone else got any cool finds?

 

"subject of development and were changed over time. which is why many race cars are restored to look like they did at a certain point in thier past. "

And I would add that in my opinion most racers that survived long enough were eventually developed to an undesirable point as desperate measures were needed to cope with obsolescence and changing safety rules--think of something like a 1957 sprint car altered to meet late roll cage requirements and changes in tire tech, as an example. Once the original form starts to disappear, then maybe it's time for a restoration that backdates the car--which in some ways is getting conceptually close to re-creation.
Or show cars--we recently saw a discussion of the "little Beaver" '35 coupe here; I think 99 out of 100 Hambers would likely try to take that one back a few years. If the original concept of a car is great, it is unlikely that lengthy development will lead to improvement!

 

The Alfa 2900 in the pictures actually bridges a few topics covered here...it was built from the shadow of the remains of Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B No. 412021 (the bent and burned chassis in the picture.) The car actually didn't start life as one of the Mille Miglia-bodied cars...I think it was a Touring-bodied spider originally. The person that bought the wreckage decide when recreating the car to body it like one of the team cars (the two remaining REAL cars are both in the US...the aforementioned Ralph Lauren car, and another, the actual race winner, owned by Fred Simeone.) Because of the damage done by the fire and decades of exposure little if anything was usable from the car...the car (pictured nice and red and restored next to the rusty photo) that claims s/n 412021 probably has nothing in it from the original car, which never looked like it to begin with since the body was different originally anyway. There was also (supposedly) the remains of a 1958 Ferrari Testarossa that were turned into a basically new car (though the chassis on that MIGHT have been used in the restoration?)

They were part of a collection of cars owned by a guy named Dave Biggs in MO. As mentioned a barn fire destroyed all cars inside. Depending on who you believe the remains were either dragged into the woods and left to be taken over by trees and bushes and earth OR they were buried completely and then a state road was paved over them.

The Alfa was for sale for a while...I think people had a hard time moving it because it had too many stories...if the guy who restored the car originally had chosen to bring it back to its original body style maybe there wouldn't be so many issues...also, apparently THREE different cars are trying to claim the identity of the Ferrari (s/n 0720TR.)

If anyone's interested in a LONG read about a similar situation, here's the story/judgement for a court case dealing with the famous Bentley team car "Old Number One":

http://www.gomog.com/articles/no1judgement.html

 

Oh, also, the Auto Union that showed up in the British Isles was somewhat proven to be an elaborate fake, though since it had a magazine article on it people have kind of kept quite about retractions.

The rule in England that Metalshapes refers to is the 3/5ths rule created by Dennis Jenkinson. Your car must have three of the following five parts original to the car, in descending order of importance:

Chassis, body, engine, transmission, suspension.

Cris

 

Thanks for the extra Info Cris.

That link to Old Number One was pretty interesting too...

 

Per the Brero Ferrari 340/375MM sn#0286AM mentioned above -- the whole story, restoration, pictures, etc are on my website (http://marksavory.com/0286am/index.html) as I was involved a few years ago in bringing it back to life. Ultimately I have about 2000+ pictures of the whole restoration -- as discovered, transported, documentation, restoration and ultimately being vintage raced again.

The Alfa Romeo 8C2900B sn#412021 has been a bastardized stepchild for the past fifteen years. It's a bitsa car -- pieces from here and there to create it and definitely the wrong coachwork on the car. (The original one was rather doudy looking) I've been involved with some of the other 8C2900's / P3's over the years for Pebble Beach and vintage automobile racing. But the story of it's rebirth (and the Ferrari Testa Rossa) are good stories of the lengths people will go to chase their dreams.

My favorite story? Bugatti "hunter" in France found a gran prix winning Bugatti after taking coffee with the owner for twenty plus years as he was aware of a connection. The owner the day before he was to go to the retirement home decided to unveil his prized Bugatti Typo 35. They all headed out to the wood shed and moved wood for a few hours. Then at the back of the shed, there was giant mounds of rotting horse manure. After a bit of digging, they got to canvas and oiled skin wrappings and removed those. Beneath it all was one of the first famous Bugatti racecars. It had been buried in the early days of the German invasion of France until its discovery in the early 1970's. I have pictures of the car as it was rolled out into the sun after its long internment.

Per the Auto-Unions being discovered? There have been a few and another one was discovered fairly recently. It is in England now awaiting a full restoration once a client with enough $$$$$$ is found to make happen. The stories of what it takes to find, negotiate the deal and finally get the car is usually filled with lots of clock & dagger spy stuff. But eventually the true stories are finally revealed. And yes -- there is still two more that are known to have existed in the early 1970's at a technology center in Moscow -- but have disappeared since then to whereabouts unknown.

I've heard rumours of some interesting European racecars or one-off coachwork specials still out there with enough legitimacy in the story to entail former customers to still seek and chase the stories in the hopes of finding that "last great undiscovered" significant automobile...

 

This thread is what the HAMB is about....awesome stuff. Thanks to all who have posted. Makes dealing with the newbie and highschool BS worthwhile...


I always think it's amazing what is stashed in barns and in the oddest places. I've seen salt flat cars hung on walls, muscle cars high up on stacks of pallets, cars assembled in basements, and entire cars disassembled and scattered in rafters. The Mopar guys will build an entire R code car around a fender tag and a chunk of cowl, raising several issues and many tempers.
Sometimes I think my hoopty is rough, then I look at stories like this and see that with enough cash and drive, anything is possible, and that I really don't have it so bad. And that Futureliner thing is flat awesome. I can't even fathom the mental and physical effort required to restore something that huge to concours specs. Wiring, casting new 20" whitewalls with correct lettering...that's vision.

 

OK Here's my take....

Real men driving real cars make real history.....everything else is FAKE

I have all too personal experiance with owning a real one off race car and having it FAKED by the a German car company complete with my serial number.... Then they did everything they could to discredit me, my car and everything I ever did! In the end History and I won.BUT not really no one wins in all that kind of a ''Shit storm''

Restoring a race car? For which racer in it's life. The first? Last? Most famous? You own it...... you pick!

I own an Alfa 8C 2300. A race car. It was modified so much that my choice is to do it as last really run in anger. Will it be worth more or less. I don't really care.......It will be closer to what it was than faking a new body and the rest.......TO UNMODIFY IT!

I own a 1927 S type Mercedes....It has an actual factory five year race history. In which the factory switched numbers,changed the bodywork three times and god know what else. I'm putting it back in the last factory body
cause it's pretty and I like it....... My car my choice. Is it real?... fully factory documented and that's that

I own a fake Maserati 151 LM coupe. All the real cars were written off....
Does that make a faithful fake real....nope and you know I don't care.
I make no history for the car and the first thing I tell everyone that see it that it is a fake....the other two fakes the owners claim are '' real '' in some way. Go figure.....

I've been very very lucky to find real cars I loved and a couple fakes I love just as much.... but some folks just don't have the class to admit that

A wise old friend told me once "Every puppy has to have a name"

Next question is is my 32 roadster a fake cause it's got a new body or my 40 a fake cause it's got a new chassis?

I think you have to own and save enough real carsand history before you can own fakes,but that's easy for me to say I've done it.

Just my 2-cents at midnight

 

I have a friend who owns an old Indy car that ran as the "Auto Shippers Special" in the late '40s. It's a rail-frame car, originally built in the '30s with an upright grille and a boat tail like a classic Miller. The car was rebodied at least once and has had a number of engines in it.

Jim has told me that there are two other restored cars that claim to be the same car he owns. One was built under its earlier, discarded body; one was built around the original engine, and his has the original frame with a later body.

It's hard to say that anybody is wrong in this situation, and I don't think there is any real misrepresentation, but it sure does seem like history has been re-written some.

 

It was in Classic & Sports Car (a UK magazine)

 

Well, did you inform the lying SOB that ya' caught'em ?

I would've had to told him to his face he was a lying sack of shit, regardless of how much money or the number of high buck cars he owned.

The next owner of that car is the poor bastard that'll take it up the shorts.

 

All this brings up the question in California this last summer. I never heard the final rule interpretation. Is A 2004/2005 Boyd's Duece with NO origional parts a 1932 Ford or not?


And what do I call my 1928 framed and titled, 30/31 Coupe bodied car with the 69 Torino engine in it? It's got 36 and 39 bones, a Bronco rear and a Stewart dropped Dago axle. It's got 65 Mustang steering and the driveline is 1/2 65 Fairlane and 1/2 Dana. Also has guide headlights from some unknown Chevy truck on stands made from a 29 headlight bar. I'll be a fraud no matter what I call it. So confusing, I need a BEER. Who's buying?

 

That'd be called a HOT ROD Joe...they're all "one-offs"!

 

My buddy painted some rare ferrari race car. I believe it was a P6 but I can't be sure. It ended up being on the cover of some sports car magazine this summer. It was supposed to have been wrecked and destroyed. There was a Ferrari rep that followed the car around for its restoration. He basically said that anything could be considered an original if you pay the right people who decide enough money.it is in the background of this pic.

 

Background? I can't get past the FOREGROUND! That custom is sweet! Anymore pics available?

 

no doubt that thing is awesome. chopped byscane?