Dick Kraft’s Highland Plating Special

The historians out there are currently gritting their teeth over the title of this article. See, Dick Kraft didn’t build the Highland Plating Special – Richard and Gary Seiden did. BUT, they started with a track and salt tested ‘T’ roadster that was originally built by Dick Kraft in the late 1940’s and labeled the Kraft Special. In the March, 1962 issue of Hot Rod Magazine, Eric Rickman called the Kraft Special “one of the best known roadsters of decades past…” Even so, the car is probably best known today as the Highland Plating Special.

I guess the Seiden’s version gets more pub simply because it was built closer to the golden era of Hot Rod media. In the late 40’s there was just a few magazines around to cover the trend setters of the day, but by the 1960’s there were rags published from coast to coast and a much bigger market to read it all. The Highland Plating Special was featured in many of them. Meanwhile, a quick google image search of the “Kraft Special” returns only three images of the earlier version of the car. And I don’t know off hand of any publications that gave  a spread to the earlier version of the car.

If you have more shots of the “Kraft Special” than I’ve posted here, please – post them!!!!

In any case, all of this hoopla over Kraft’s version of the car takes nothing away from the Seiden brother’s Highland Plating Special. In it’s own right, it’s a downright gorgeous car that builds on a perfect profile imagined by Kraft and adds “modern” performance and fabrication detail. Better yet, the brothers continued with the car’s tradition of racing – turning over 114mph with an et of 12.41 seconds at the drags. These numbers were impressive in 1962. Even more so when one considers this was done with the (by then) obsolete flathead Ford.

Anyway, enjoy my collection of photos… and like I said, please add more if you have them.

……….