Race Cars On The Street

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 suitable for a nasty and well warmed over Small Block Chevy that could terrorize the street with sound and smoke. The whole idea is pretty much unobtainable for me due to check book restrictions, but dreams never hurt anybody and I love the mental images.

My pal, Rick Dulaney, shares many of these same passions and has been riding along in my dreams with me as we discuss what chassis and motor combinations would be the most fun to work with. One combination that never came up was a 1959 Cooper T51 chassis mated to the venerable Maserati straight-4…. for obvious reasons… BUT, as the above (and enlarged below) photo proves, it’s doable!

The T51 chassis was used in both Formula 1 and 2 in 1959 and has a sidebar in the history book as it was the first rear-engined car to win a Formula 1 championship. I’m guessing this photo (Secured by Rick) was taken sometime in the early 60’s in and around Riverside Raceway in California. It usually took a year or two for the hot shit road cars to get imported into America and Rick tells me that it wasn’t uncommon for folks to hot shoe their race cars to and from the track at Riverside. In fact, he regularly made the trek in his Corvette spec car (Rick, we need pictures!).

Granted, I would rather do something that seats two and features covered rolling stock, but there is no denying the coolness of this picture. Can you imagine the sound bouncing off the rigs on the highway? Simply glorious…

…..

Ohhh, and by the way. Tech week is over… Congrats to our winner! Neal’s tech post was well thought out and cleverly generated. You can check it out here. Special thanks to GMP for providing the killer award and to all of the folks that participated and voted!