As you all well know, lately I've been dreaming about taking a vintage road car and converting it into a street car. My dreams have mostly been relegated to C1 and C2 Corvettes, early 60's Lola MKI chassis cars, etc... You know, stuff that is suitabl... <BR><BR>To read the rest of this blog entry from The Jalopy Journal, click here.
bad ass, I mean REALLY BAD ASS!!!! Kind of what got me to start the "road race cars" thread. And most likely the direction I may go with my Buick roadster
Judging by the hat, I believe, that is Maurice Trintigant in his Cooper going to Riverside for the 1960 U.S. Grand Prix. You can read a little more about why he was driving down the highway here: http://home.roadrunner.com/~fsheff/moss.htm#5car
Reminds me of back issues of Car Craft where they were building IMSA style cars for the street.....and then the guys doing NASCAR "replicas".... Remember Big Red? The '69 Camaro built for the Silver State Challenge yet was a street car.....may be OT for here, but there's no denying how badass a car like that would be to cruise the freeway..... I prefer street driven DRAG cars.... Somewhere, I think in a thread here, was an old front engine dragster that was street "legal".....how fun would that be...haha.
Back in the seventies in Calif, someone had a nova F/C on the street. It was in a mag, can't remember which one, POP Hotrodding? The car was white and purple. Lippy
Back in the '70s there was a group of guys in So. Cal. that ran some interesting stuff on the street including a Lola T70 coupe, a Ferrari P3, a 250LM, the Ferrari 250 "Breadvan" and one of the McLaren M6GT coupes. I saw the T70 on the Ventura Fwy about 1972. Maybe the best was the guy in Germany who had a street legal Porsche 917. Oddly enough, it was registered in a US state, Alabama I think. Kurt O.
A former neighbor and friend of mine has a couple mid-60's Ford factory lightweight drag cars that he rolls around in on occassion. He had one in the Autorama recently, and I talked to him about driving it around the neighborhood. He said "it's a little touchy, but really puts a smile on your face." O/T cars, but really cool factory built 1960's drag cars. I can't imagine anything on the street that's much faster or louder. They're insane. I would LOVE to drive something like that.
Dino Martin, Dean's son had a Ferrari P3, if I remember correctly on the street...fly yellow.....it was in Rodant Track years ago.. although not a road racer by any stretch of the imagination, Gary Kleckner's Chevy was a local legend around here on the street. It was a wheelstander at the strip on weekends, but prowled around the San Gabriel Valley on weekdays. Gary's brother, Doc, owned a drive-in hamburger joint in Arcadia and Gary would be there often. In about 1969 a couple of us guys were at Taco Lita taco stand in Arcadia and we heard something rumbling down the street. It was Gary and a friend, complete with facemasks with breathing filters...and, yes, as he went by the whole taco joint filled with nitro fumes...to a 19 year old kid, you just couldn't get any better than that.
This picture was taken on the east bound 60 Fwy in an area called "Box Springs" - between downtown Riverside and what once was the Riverside Raceway.
In 1973, I worked on a television public service commercial with James Garner for a couple of days. It was during the oil embargo when we first had the long gas lines. The "spot" was "Don't Be Fuelish" and one featured George C. Scott and the other, James Garner. Both told "us" to conserve gas, take mass transit, etc., etc. Anyways, I knew he was a big time car nut, having been in the film, "Grand Prix". He also had a race team of Corvettes and in 1969, a bright blue Lola T-70, which he still owned and was in his garage at home. He admitted that although it wasn't 100% legal, it was close enough to make a run to the market or head onto the freeways late at night. Very nice man... here's a short film clip with a small part of the James Garner commercial. Part of it is included in this at about the 30 second mark. The location for that shoot was the interchange of the 210 Foothill Freeway and the 2 Glendale Freeway. That's where the studio filmed all the awful stuff for "CHiPs"...because the freeways were under construction and closed to the public at that time. The scene after the James Garner scene was shot from the overpass on the 5/134 interchange at Zoo Drive, not far from Bobs Big Boy in Burbank. We actually had the Highway Patrol block traffic for a minute or two so that there would be a ton of traffic for our cameras as the cars went under our location. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNb5c1apV6I
I had a neighbour who had a type 23 Bugatti, single seat bresca ex GP car...that was his only car and used it for going to work in.....the only down side for him was the on or off throttle and 4 inch wide tyres....he would fishtail the car constantly even on a straight road....this he swapped for a 1927 Alfa Romeo 2 seat racer that got with no pistons...1924 Dennis truck pistons and hand cut white metal bearings and still went to work in it complete with Brooklands exhaust!! not popular as he went to work at 5.30am!!..His final fore in to road legal racers was a LeMans Bentley....12 cars and 13 chassis (incase of accident bentley supplied one extra frame!!)..he had the car built on the 13th chassis...4litr blower bentley as a daily!!!!!!
how about a 917.......? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOE9sjsV15w http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaKhFrZ3-vQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNiVDgMiExQ
Damn Ryan I have been thinking about a Shelby Cobra replica with 354 Hemi under the hood. Something that can be made to handle pretty well and is definitely road racing type car as they were back in the day but not with your normal powerplant. I kept thinking about that one built back in '51 (red with 331 Hemi) that was shown in a small blurb in TRJ a while back. That car was awesome but I am not making my own body anytime soon so the Cobra body was my next logical choice. I just think it would be awesome to have a race bred road car that sounded like the apocalypse and could handle with the nest of them circa 1968. Cobra Body (factory five) Black paint (flat or gloss) 354 Hemi with 4 94's or 2 4bbls 6spd tranny Bronze colored Halibrands with knock offs Simple race bred interior with two seats Big white circle on doors with your choice of number perhaps. Love real deal race cars!!!
I have a magazine article HRM or Motor Trend I think from about 69 or 70 with Dinos Ferrari, very cool. Locally infamous was a McLaren owned by a restaurantuer in Spearfish South Dakota of all places. One story has he left the local rodrun at sunup after a night of partying and they said you could hear him rowing through the gears for MILES up Hwy 385 here in the hills.
Sometime in the mid-80's, we were at the Street Rod Nationals in St. Paul. On the way back to our motel one evening, we came upon a fully street legal sprint car, in the process of being pulled over by one of the twin cities finest. We should have stopped to see what the outcome was, but we were hot, tired, hungry and stinky, so we went on our way.
1968 is what you are after, then no hemi or 94's...2x4's on a sbc or sbf would be more appropriate for '68....shiny paint, too... Does anyone make an Allard style roadster reproduction?...that's maybe what your looking for...Olds, Caddy or Hemi powered mid 1950's stuff. That's more like the vintage that you're shooting for.... loose the spare tire and maybe the hood...........
That car was posted on here the other day doing Autocross. Here it is! http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=449778&highlight=autocross
Ron Shuman - my hero. Just re-read a freat Open Wheel mag article on ALex Foods. Tok you up through the Alex foray into Indy, back when average folk could still do it. Sadly my dad had a chance to go pit for a team in 78 and never did. I chewed his butt my whole childhood!
The car in the photo is Lola T70 MkIII Coupe Chassis No. SL73/117. It was first sold to James Garner for his American International Racing Team and ran the '69 Daytona 24 hrs finishing 2nd. Garner sold it and it was used in the George Lucas film THX1138. It ended up with Eddie Hill (ya, that Eddie Hill) in Texas and he and Ercie used it as their wedding car. (Eddie Hill Photo) This is what it looked like in 2007. (Eddie Hill Photo) Eddie owned it for over 30 years. The car was sold to Europe in 2007. There is a company that builds pretty good replicas of the T70 coupe. It gets one thinking...... Cheers, Kurt O.
That 1985 video is very cool, but it's not the sprinter we saw on the street in St Paul. The one we saw had round chrome headlights, Model A style tail lights, 2 rear view mirors mounted to the cage, a licence plate, nose wing and a full 80's style cage. Hell, it might have had a radio and cup holders too! I'm thinking it was blue and white, but it was a long time go.
Here is one of the former Penske racing Lolas that my buddy rebuilt for the street for a guy from New York. He remade a lot of the sheetmetal innards out of polished stainless and put a/c and a stereo in it. We took it out on the county highway, it was pretty fast! They also redid some rare Ferrari for him, a P4 I believe....it is in the background of the Impala pic...
Can't say I have ever seen or heard of a GP car on the street til today. My friend Bob Grossman used to tell stories of the years when he would sell 'Used' Ferrari's and other race cars from his dealership. He would regularly drive 250 LeMans, GTOs and others on the streets near Nyack, NY. There are great roads around there for driving, so I can only imagine being overtaken by a bright red Ferrari GTO in the Palisades. Great Picture and some great stories all.
Even more specific I would say that is the right hand bend just before the Central off ramp. Between Cerritos and Central on the 60 headed to RIR.