Projects The bucket of ugly! A de-uglifying thread...

No ugly in this Tom Davison photograph.....outstanding T, outstanding photograph!

 

Dennis, that's the Franco clone of Grabowski's "Lightnin' Bug". Norm built it in the early 50's and later changed it into the "Kookie Car". It's been recently restored to perfection by East Bay Rods. They also re-built Mickey Himsel's bucket and the two were displayed together at this Year's GNRS.

 

Oh my...love it even more now that I've seen a good picture of it!

 

That is a very nice T-bucket.....I'm not seeing any ugly there either.

 

Tom, the Himsel bucket is also one of my favorites......the lavender & yellow version with mag wheels, with a rake like the Kookie Car! Probably why I like to say, there aren't many hot rods that are raked too much, but there are lots that are not raked enough. Early magazine influence.

 

Haha, Dennis....you've got that right!

 

Too much chrome for me, very nice though.

 

Boner
I've seen some with too much rake but of course To me the Kookie Kar was perfect. But then we'll get a lot of argument. I gotta admit Chip's T sits pretty good.

Gary

 

don't you think the headlights are a little high (almost bug like)maybe dropped so they are at least level with the top of the radiator surround?

 

Na, thats where they are supposed to be; its a hot rod with hot rod headlights mounted on hot rod headlight stands.

 

In California, when the Lightin' Bug was originally built, there was a headlight minimum height law. They are probably as low to the ground as the law would allow. Besides that, they look ok to me!

 

Tornado headlight stands. I'm lucky enough to have a pair on my roadster. They don't look as high when the car has a higher rake.

 

This was the first time I had seen the Lightnin' Bug. It's nearly perfect to my eye....and considering it's the first "T-bucket" built, that's doubly impressive. He created a classic design by which all others are measured. And it holds its own! I was talking to one of the guys who restored it andf he reminded me that Norm redid it due to a traffic accident he was in with it and he raised the rear considerably when he "Kookied" it.

 

What's really amazing is that Norm had the vision to build both versions, and they both are trend setting styles.....mild and wild!

 

That is a beautiful bucket, but A boner, one picture might be not giving it the prober respect. [emoji12]
Because that's beautiful, and zero rake and cut windshield, makes a damn fine bucket to me!

 

Couldn't wait any longer. [emoji41][emoji12]

 

I will throw the water onto the fire now and although it has been pointed out about the legal height requirements, I too believe the lights are too high as is the front spring, I'm one for having the spring look lighter and tucked down behind the axle. It appears that the axle and spring are the main attraction when one looks at the car from front on. The side view is much better and I personally believe Old Norm had a brain fart when he raised the rear too much. I know Gary, I know, this is one of the early T's in America to set the standard but that doesn't make it right for everybody to copy.

 

While there's no "right answer" here, each of us must keep in mind what was going on in Grabowski's world when he was in the "vision" stage of his Bug build: track roadsters at Ascot, Carrell and other smaller dirt tracks all over California.

The T roadster body had evolved as "best" because it was by far the lightest of the early Fords and in those early days it was common knowledge that the lighter the car the faster it ran and the better it handled...all other things being equal.

These low buck racers also had to be easy and cheap to fix when they got banged up...which was pretty often. So the front suspensions were almost always junkyard stock, the ride height being set by the "suicide" bracket at the front of the frame.

Norm's Bug was not particularly revolutionary in its day except that it incorporated a bobbed pickup bed instead of a turtle deck and an unusually high engine placement. The equipment to make it street legal was almost certainly the result of the extreme anti-hot rod vehicle codes of the day, not Norm's taste.

The real Grabowski brilliance, in my humble opinion, came out when he evolved the Bug into the Kookie Kar. That, my friends, was pure automotive genius.

 

So you want to talk about RAKE!......thanks for the pic, Tom.

 

That's such a nice rod, but why did the lift the rear of the body? It looks like they wants to show the color of the bottom side of the bed.
And it looks like it came from the pre-rake era.

And that mast steering is 90* of the floor, and steering wheels is parallel to the edge of the door. That's s turn of.

But except for that, I find it beautiful.

 

Again, just like Missy's dad said about Grabowski's car, this one, at least Mickey Himsl's redo of it is a product of what was going on at the time. I have the June '60 copy of Car Craft in front of me right now, and it is featured on the cover with several other roadsters, one of which is Roth's Excalibur. Tail up, right? A year or two after Grabowski hiked the tail and turned the "Bug" into the Kookie Car. It's what was going on at the time... Oh, it's also attributed to Larry Selmer then, too.

'Course, being a Halibrand whore, I dig the no holes and midget no holes better than the 16" steelies... And this is just about the time exotic stuff like that popped up on street driven cars. I'll add pictures in a minute.

 

As promised, pictures.


Ah.... But notice what is just to the right of Excalibur? Yup. Bill Roland's redo of Tommy Ivo's car! More on that in a minute.


But why would I scan all this stuff and NOT take the time to scan and post MY personal alpha and omega? Yup, Roland's redo of Ivo's already spectacular "T"!!! Cobalt blue paint, quickchange, carbs back on and the injection on the shelf, a bit better lofting to the top, and Halibrands....Halibrands! I swear magnesium is a drug...




Without going on my "preachy" bent that I can, something else to notice on this cover.... This cover represents a very short period of time in at least L.A. terms when wide white walls WERE acceptable on mag wheels. There has been a bunch of arguments on this subject over the years, and I have to admit that I have been in times past one of those saying "ya well, it happened, but it was ugly..." I humbly remit that statement. As the wide white wall era of the mid to late fifties gave way to the more drag influenced early sixties, this did happen. Not super often, but it did happen. This stuff being basically a fashion show for us guys, it didn't last very long. By late '61, you'd be hard pressed to see a wide white on ANY car in a west coast based magazine. The rule was either black walls and mags, or those new fangled narrow whites by that time...

 

Well Dad I couldn't have said it better. Probably couldn't have said it as well.

A lot of questions are left unanswered about Grabowski's early '50s roadster build. From the bits and pieces I've picked up over the years It was a flathead V8 powered A roadster hot rod when he bought it. He must have been having or was afraid he would have trouble registering it as a Model A and thought it would be easier to register as a T so put the T body on the A frame. Where he got the T body I've never read. Ivo said in his biography that it was common knowledge that in So. Cal. then it was common knowledge in hot rod circles that you could just find T bodies in the surrounding deserts.

From there Norm somehow convinced his parents that they needed a new engine in their almost new Cadillac and he should get the old one for the roadster. After installing that he must have for some reason decided his roadster needed new front suspension and built the reversed front suspension from parts from a '37 Ford V 8 60 and '40 Ford Parts and started chroming it all. Where he learned how to do this remains a mystery to me. From what I've read Norm wasn't a big mechanic and had a lot of work done by friends and local shops. This evidently is the version Ivo saw and went to Grabowski's house with tape measure paper and pencil and was laying under it writing down info. when Norm came home. Seems Norm let him finish not thinking anything would ever come of it.

Just after this it seems Norms T was wrecked when he let an actor drive it on a set and Norm took the Insurance money the studio paid him to build the Kookie Kar. He had the windshield extended and had the top made so he could drive it in the movies and he wouldn't be seen in it.

In the about a year while Tom was building his roadster Norm was changing his into the Kookie Kar version. Why that transformation took place I don't know but I wonder if Norm caught wind of Ivo's build and while updating it after the wreck thought he would one up Tom and update his roadster at the same time. Tom told me that he wanted to flame his roadster but Norm beat him to it. So their was some competition between the two. And the one time they raced, Tom said both their engines were pretty much stock and he just inched out Norm and was pretty proud of that. Tom is very competitive and I think so was Norm.

Well that's all I got but I fell in love with the Kookie Kar version because of 77 Sunset Strip and the '57 R&C article.

 

That's a great cover with a lot of beautiful cars on it/in it.

They are fairly spread out style wise, but non of them are straight up ugly.
But the center one is leaning towards ugly, is that the Excalibur?
There is some weird bumper solutions. But I've would love to get mags like that.

Is there any one on here who has a box of duplets, and a fair price?
I know there is some magazines I most have at some point, but one can never have to many. [emoji12]

 

Chip

You and I feel the same way about the Rolland version of Ivo's T. If it could be bettered Bill did it. I really like both versions the same.

What might slipping by you in the whitewall mag. controversy is those WW Bill Rolland put on the mag. wheels were "medium whites" not the real "wide whites" that were in fashion in the early to mid '50s which would have looked really ugly on those wheels. And pretty much all the racing slicks you saw then were WW because the retreaders used the biggest and best used tires to retread and they were almost always WW. Most Dragsters ran them on all the mag. racing wheels they used.

I too like them both ways.

Gary

 

I met Norm at Columbus Ohio at the Street Rod Nats in 1990. I talked to him about the car and I recall a few things he told me, one was that Valley Custom made a set of frame covers for the front of the frame, as he had cut the frame up pretty good and Neil Emory made the set to hide all the boogers in the frame.
The other story was that the car was being filmed and the " actor" was getting yelled at to really stomp on the car in the scene they were filming. The actor goosed the throttle and the car fishtailed into a 4 by 4 post stuck in the ground. Norm said that when that happened everyone on the set turned from the car to look at him to see his reaction. Norm was a great storyteller... He said the studio paid for the repairs so it was all good.

I have a pic with Norm and myself that I went back and took the next day kicking myself that I didn't do it the first day...he remembered me and was happy to pose for the pic, with his beer in his hand...
He was hocking his wooden scooters, they were beautiful but too expensive for a broke 23 year old...

 

No, I caught that Gary. But we all know how I can be with tangential information, right? See, I am learning! I figured if I said too much I'd end up explaining wide, mid, and narrow whitewalls and the years they were prominent and such, much like I am starting to now...

 

I must thank-you guys for all this information with pictures as I doubt there would be only a handfull of guys here in NZ that would have those very early Rodding magazines. I will say that I do like the Bill Rowland version of the Ivo T above all the others.
Back a few pages we discussed body lines etc on how to get it right or how to make a car "Ugly" and without causing any shit to happen, that '27 short arse thing with the raked body, steering and the unusual fuel tank is bloody ugly due to too much rake and all sorts of different angles going on. Heck just the body to the radiator surround angles scream UGLY to me. But this is what this thread is all about and learning form the past so that we can atleast try and get it right.

 

The one thing I do admire on that car is the engine as I have a whole new appreciation for a well dressed flatty now in my old age.

 

You know chip I write this stuff not only for you but for the young guys that weren't there. You and I have lived this T bucket shit pretty much all our teen and adult life. You probably earlier than your teens with your father into it. I know you are probably more knowledgable than I especially into the '60s stuff. And I in my mind I think everybody wants to know about Wide WW, Medium WW and inch walls and when they were popular. Then there were red line tires later but then I'm not getting into that.