Hot Rods Do People Really Spend like This?

Things are only worth what people are willing to pay for it. Be that in labor or final price. I've been around a lot of markets that had have the price go through the floor. Either by lack of interest (generational) or just simple market forces. Recently I saw a model A beutifully restored by an old timer. Easy a 20,000 dollar car. When he passed the kids sold it to some guy who was going to turn it into a rat rod for 3000. The kids couldn't even get it started. Furthermore they had no idea how to put it into the right market. They sold it on Craigslist.

 

Along with the cost of the build comes a trailer and tow vehicle. Then you need a place to store the trailer when you are not using it. I go to the NATS every year and don't see too many Riddler or AMBR cars in the lots. I put a lot of miles on my cars and you can't avoid stone chips and road grime. That $500,000 car can go downhill very fast. If you don't use your cars you might as well carry an 8"x12" picture around your neck.

 

50K FOR GRILL? could be, i wonder about guys who buy $5000 rolex watches when a $3 walmart does the same. if someone wants it then they pay for it

 

I like both cars... But if I was offered one or the other .....I would pick jakes coupe without even having to think about it , while the maroon coupe is very elegant... Jakes just " speaks to me"

 

This really isn't that hard for me to believe. The shop I used to work at specialized in high end vintage restorations. It wasn't out of the ordinary to have more than a couple $200,000 - 400,000 jobs in the shop at any given time. A lot of the cars we did, were quite rare and a lot of the parts needed to be made by hand, and it takes a lot more time than you would think to make parts flow seamlessly. Needless to say, these cars went to Pebble Beach and needed to be perfect. Oh yeah, when the customer is laying out that kind of cash, they are way more critical than any judge at any show.
There is no way I'd want to be responsible for a car like that. Some of these guys just about had a stroke anytime anyone got near them, and that just isn't fun to me. I like to drive mine and call rick chips and scratches 'character'.

 

No value judgement intended or implied. The reasoning behind comparing it to a photo of Jacobs car (or the photo 31vicky posted) isn't to see if its "better" than the Jacobs car, its to get a clear idea just how much the grill shell and hood on the Federale car have been modified, and as 31vickys photo makes clear, it is a BUNCH. There isn't a single dimension or contour on the grill shell on the Federale car that is original.
As I said to 31vicky off-forum, my guess is, that while the process may have started with a truck grill shell, my hunch is that at some point it was probably abandoned, I think the grill shell is probably made from scratch, regardless of what is says in the magazine. The entire top portion of the grill shell has been "squared up" to mimic the contour of the cowl, its thinner in cross-section, shorter, and the bottom half tapers in much more sharply, and the insert itself is not only smaller and more pointed at the bottom, it is "flattened" in profile. There really isn't a single aspect of the grill or shell that is the same as a '37 truck shell. After looking at photos of the car, and the bare metal photo of the shell in TRJ, that's my conclusion anyway. Your mileage may vary.

 

I wonder how much Jake Jacobs had in his? They don't look that different.

 

Oh, and another thing I said to 31vicky off-forum, I just wish my stocks were going up as fast as the price of the grill on this thread...

 

I'm not so sure lots of us don't have this kind of money in our heaps - (if we could charge ourselves for the zillion hours we've got invested in time.......................)

 

So when the BUILDER doesn't like it, is the redo done on HIS dime or the CUSTOMERS?
I realize we're talking about a high dollar "statement" car for both the owner and builder. If the builder isn't happy with what he did, that's kind of his fault isn't it? I understand paying 2x if the owner isn't happy with something he suggested.

 

As the OP, I want to thank everyone, first of all, for remaining civil and on topic for 4 pages! Quite a feat for the HAMB. As I said, I like the car and I really admire the thought and craftsmanship that went into it. The HAMB has always been about building the car the way you want to. And, if you have the cash and want to spend it on a fancy car, that is really fine by me.

I think it's great that there are such craftspeople around and people with really deep pockets to pay for their work. On the other hand,I really can't fathom personally spending that kind of money on a grill, shell no matter how cool.

Finally, although this car has the look, and although it it driven, it is not a traditional hot rod. The owner told a builder what he wanted, and somebody else built it-all of it. At the end of the day, that's not much different than walking into your friendly neighborhood Ferrari or Bugatti dealer and checking off the options list. No work on his own, no search and assembly of parts-somebody else did it all. Incredibly well, but it's a store bought toy.

I don't think you often really can do a traditional hot rod the old way. I'm in the midst of putting '50 Pontiac taillights on my A. No junkyard near me has '50 lights I could harvest (I can hear Harry's U-Pull it laughing now). So I bought the lights, but the installation is mine. It won't be perfect but it will be mine-built by me.

 

Good question! My experience has been many builders I dealt with did the redo at their expense if it was their mistake. But if the customer wanted the look to be different from how it came out, he paid the bid for the redo. Maybe a little give and take on both parties on such a high end build. The builder has his reputation to protect also.

 

Cool hot rod with a great looking hand crafted grill and shell. I do know the owner drives the wheels off of it and will continue to do so. He has built hot rods from the ground up his self and has done well in the business world. So why not have the car of your dreams built by a great builder. I am sure a few of us if we were every lucky enough to have that kind of $$$ would want to do the same.
We all try to build the best we can with what we have and hope everyone will like what the end product
is. If not as long as we are happy with it that is what counts.
I enjoy looking at the high buck builds and am always looking for one thing that I can get an idea to work into the next build.

 

Lots of cars were completely built by shops back in the day. Working on it yourself has nothing to do with a car being traditional.

 

I agree. If I had the chance it would be an honor to have a car built by Eric and the crew at pinkees. Touring the shop is truly an incredible experience.

 

Its crazy how are hobby has turned into a rich man sport. I'm so thankful with the addiction my dad gave me with this hobby, that he bestowed upon me the ability to weld and fabricate and to be able to build my own cars.

 

I own a shop that builds custom products and I can't afford my stuff. I beat into my guys heads craftsmanship but if one of em took a week to do a 2 day job he'd be out the door. That being said GOOD fabricators ( talent , workmanship, good attitude) seem to be like
Fu$@&ng unicorns.... The smaller shop owners know what I'm talking about.

 

That's just good employees in general. But that is so true, it seems the more talented the guy is the more they disappear for weeks at a time, but they only disappear when you are slammed.

 

And then they disappear for good......

 

I guess I can't relate to it being a store bought toy. Traditional NEVER means self constructed ONLY. Was Barris a "store" that built chopped Mercs? SoCal was for losers who couldn't cast a head, intake, or whatever? Pete n Jake's too? I never will be able to get my head around that. I have some fairly mad skills and I'll raise a rt hand to the idea that I'd love to be able to have a pro shop build me a car. The "old ways" tend to get more romance than they deserve. You know it when you see it no matter who built it. I suppose that would be a better car built on a dirt floor garage or in someone's driveway, right? At my age some of the old ways are grossly over rated.

 

Now here in the real world??? LOL

 

Term, "GOLD CHAINER", comes to mind.
I worked in a shop where the Dr. dropped off a check and told the owner, "Let me know how much to cover on the deposit". We were restoring his Grandfather's 37 Caddie.

 

While station in CA, I work for a small hot rod shop nights and weekends. One Saturday we had a guy come in with a copy of "Hot Rod" showing us a 1955 Chevy, which was chopped and all decked out. He wanted to know how much the shop needed to start and where he could unload the 55 that was on a U-Haul trailer. The guy who ran the shop, said to drop off a certified check or bank check for 5000 dollars and then bring the car in. The guy handed over a check, drop off the car, said all parts will be drop shipped, and to call him when the shop required more money. After checking with the guy's bank, we started on the 55. Parts came on a schedule and after three months the car was looking like the one in "Hot Rod". The guy came in, check out he car, we made a few changes and corrections and he set up a time to rent a trailer and get the car. My boss had me delivered the car to his home which was about 40 minutes away. the guy had a large brick building and next to it was his Airstream trailer in which he lived. He notice me looking at his set up and said, "everyone has different priorities in life.

 

Two sides to that coin. one's bullshit, attention whore type stuff. (look how big my pecker is-LOL). Other side is, there's some truth to some of it and that's why the old cars we cherish have been priced well beyond most our reach. It went from a hobby to a fucking business.

 

The shop I work in (dream retirement job) builds some pretty high end cars and ,Yes people do spend a lort of money on them. The one we are just finishing is for a retired neuro-surgeon. Great guy, just has the bucks to spend and it helps me keep doing what I love to do.

 

HA.... $5000 is half a Rolex

 

I have to ring in once more since I was thinking of the Jacobs yellow coupe and this one. There's nothing one could say or point to that would make me pick one over the other. I was pretty young when I'd 1st seen the yellow car under construction. That image is still in my head as a top 10 pick. Got to see it in person at Detroit nearly 10 years ago and I was just as taken by it then as in the 70s. This new one? In plain ol garage speak, "Fuckin eh...". Better? Not at all if we're talking aesthetics only. Quality? Doesn't matter, does it? Jacobs' is referenced in the text in TRJ and that's no surprise either. I know the topic is based on spending which tends to chap the occasional butt cheek within these pages. I've spent a lifetime getting paid for thousands of hours on one car. From the part of the build that cause the scars, burns, personal angst, and of course the rewards, it's normal to me. I can't do all of it and never really felt the need to. I have colleagues out there to cover what my projects need beyond the shop's capability and always have had such. Then again there's a thing or 2 that I do where other shops come to me as well. Without "us", that being shops that build for clients, there probably wouldn't exist those things that inspire others. If I was responsible for hundreds of people, made monster money at whatever that was, as I said in the 1st reply I'd absolutely seek a pro builder and bring my dreams into reality. To look down one's nose at such is just sour grapes. I have ideas that I could never bring to fruition because I know what it's going to take to get there. I can see some of them in the finest detail as well, right down to fasteners and interior hardware. The thing is that those are MINE, not the shop I'd get to build it, not the guy that works there, mine. I'd embrace the cooperative it takes between the ideas and the builders that make it reality. How can this be a bad thing? How can it not garner some respect and admiration? It's not worth picking on something that took a pile of hours to get "just right" because that's going to happen when there's an invisible version that an owner and builder are shooting for. Getting really specific, it's right up front. It's perhaps one of the most important design features on the whole car that makes it what it is. I know it's the 1st page I opened my issue up to for no more reason than that grille and the car it's on, and I'm not really surprised at the time it took. It looks like it grew there, and it damn well should.

 

as far as it not being traditional because it was paid to be built, look at it this way, would it be a more traditional car if the same guy built it in the same shop, but did it for himself? same car.

 

For clarity. Part of the original question was "how could someone spend 300-350 hrs on a grill shell".

 

For me, whether or not it was 'home-built' has nothing to do with my opinion of the build. It has more to do with the 'feel' of the car. I will say that these type of builds miss the mark more often than not because of the 'unlimited' money well; if a little is good, more is better, right? Not always... many of these builds (IMO) cross the line between 'traditional hot rod' into the realm of coach-builds/exotics and tend to have the same 'feel' as the late-model 'show cars' you see at places like SEMA or the one-offs at Pebble Beach. Even the owner admitted that 'it got away from them'....

Beautiful car (for the most part; I think the wheels are a major 'mistake' along with the grill/shell) with exemplary workmanship, but it just doesn't look 'traditional'.....