David Kirkham
09-27-2009, 07:27 PM
Hey Guys! Nice to find this site. I have found some of our customers already here in the site. Seems like a nice bunch of guys.
For introduction, I will post a excerpt from an essay I wrote a bit ago.
"14 years ago the world was an exciting place--the Berlin Wall had fallen, Russia was imploding, and her satellite countries were throwing off the bonds of long, dark years of political and economic oppression. My brother Thomas and I found ourselves looking at a relic of the Cold War--an old jet fighter airplane made at a factory in Poland that was desperate for work. My brother turned to me and said, “These guys could make an aluminum-bodied Cobra!” Captivated by this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I left BYU and my dreams of medical school behind. I landed in Poland, with a toy model of a 1965 AC Cobra, a Polish-English dictionary, and a new dream.
There, I wandered through an enormous aircraft factory which produced 3 MiG's/day at the height of the Cold War. Times were tough; where 60,000 men and women once worked, only 24,000 remained. Day after day I walked past somber lathe and mill operators who stood motionless behind a thousand silent machines--waiting for someone, anyone, to give them work. The lights were off because Poland's defense industries could no longer afford to keep them on.
I saw the worry of an uncertain future in the eyes of those craftsmen, their faces worn with far more years than they had passed on this earth. In time, my mother joined me on trips to Poland, only to be routinely mistaken as my wife. What a startling condemnation of the trials of life women in Poland endured under socialist rule. We were at that factory in Poland the day over 20,000 of those remaining 24,000 men and women were turned out into the cold--in a city of 100,000. We watched as displaced workers wearily pedaled home to greet anxious families. The bailouts were bankrupt. The specter of food rationing crept back into family conversations. The once thunderous skies over the “People's Aircraft Factory” were still."
I remember not being able to speak Polish (at the time) and having to communicate how to build our cars to the engineers. There was very little paper to draw on--so I drew pictures of the parts in the dirt with a stick.
Since that day 15 years ago, we have made about 700 cars. I know we are not exactly the "Traditional" Hot Rod guys, but perhaps we can add to the conversation with our experience of making hand-crafted bodies. Aluminum and steel are similar in their production techniques.
I just finished a book on a custom, billet car we made for Larry Ellison. There are chapters in the book that I hope will be of some help to those wanting to make their own parts. Here is a link to the thread. For clarification, the body, hood, and trunk were made in Poland. The doors and the rest of the car was made here in our factory in Utah.
I am happy to answer any questions anyone might have.
Thanks!
David
:):):)
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=401875
For introduction, I will post a excerpt from an essay I wrote a bit ago.
"14 years ago the world was an exciting place--the Berlin Wall had fallen, Russia was imploding, and her satellite countries were throwing off the bonds of long, dark years of political and economic oppression. My brother Thomas and I found ourselves looking at a relic of the Cold War--an old jet fighter airplane made at a factory in Poland that was desperate for work. My brother turned to me and said, “These guys could make an aluminum-bodied Cobra!” Captivated by this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I left BYU and my dreams of medical school behind. I landed in Poland, with a toy model of a 1965 AC Cobra, a Polish-English dictionary, and a new dream.
There, I wandered through an enormous aircraft factory which produced 3 MiG's/day at the height of the Cold War. Times were tough; where 60,000 men and women once worked, only 24,000 remained. Day after day I walked past somber lathe and mill operators who stood motionless behind a thousand silent machines--waiting for someone, anyone, to give them work. The lights were off because Poland's defense industries could no longer afford to keep them on.
I saw the worry of an uncertain future in the eyes of those craftsmen, their faces worn with far more years than they had passed on this earth. In time, my mother joined me on trips to Poland, only to be routinely mistaken as my wife. What a startling condemnation of the trials of life women in Poland endured under socialist rule. We were at that factory in Poland the day over 20,000 of those remaining 24,000 men and women were turned out into the cold--in a city of 100,000. We watched as displaced workers wearily pedaled home to greet anxious families. The bailouts were bankrupt. The specter of food rationing crept back into family conversations. The once thunderous skies over the “People's Aircraft Factory” were still."
I remember not being able to speak Polish (at the time) and having to communicate how to build our cars to the engineers. There was very little paper to draw on--so I drew pictures of the parts in the dirt with a stick.
Since that day 15 years ago, we have made about 700 cars. I know we are not exactly the "Traditional" Hot Rod guys, but perhaps we can add to the conversation with our experience of making hand-crafted bodies. Aluminum and steel are similar in their production techniques.
I just finished a book on a custom, billet car we made for Larry Ellison. There are chapters in the book that I hope will be of some help to those wanting to make their own parts. Here is a link to the thread. For clarification, the body, hood, and trunk were made in Poland. The doors and the rest of the car was made here in our factory in Utah.
I am happy to answer any questions anyone might have.
Thanks!
David
:):):)
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=401875