History Driving the Kookie Kar back to 1958

Well those rumors have been put to rest.

 

Ross Myers will certainly do the car justice. The quality and taste displayed on all his other goodies can attest to that!

 

Somewhere in all the pre auction hype and talk, I heard or read that the latest
iteration of the car was built to be someones car on the Munsters, but that didn't happen.
Can anyone confirm that? or add more to that?

It's is certainly in the right hands, being restored to the right version, by the right shop.
Damn cool!

 

Some Icons were lost through mishap or misfortune, some decayed peacefully, some had unspeakable things done to them.... this is one of the latter. The version with the slicks gets my vote.

 

Hello,
Remembering that T bucket roadster from a long time ago, was really something. We had seen other T buckets, but not one finished as well as this blue one with those short flames. My brother and I were kids that loved making models as soon as we could get our hands on a new plastic kit at the hobby/toy store. When the newest T roadster came out, our tools also came out to modify the body to make it look like the T bucket roadster we saw on TV and the mags.

The kits had just about everything we needed to modify, except for the smooth individual flowing header pipes. We tried cutting, heat bending, and sanding the larger, plastic, outer frames that held all of the parts, but that did not work. So, we got our hands on some wax resist jewelry/dental rods for making molds of rings, bracelets and dental products. Those little rods were perfect for the smooth bends and the flowing look.

When we finished the T bucket, painted the short flames as well as we could, it looked fine, except for the header pipes. The blue paint was close, the flames, well, they were a little rough and looked too stubby. Upon installation, the headers looked great, uniform, and flowed straight back. They even had flared ends made by an ice pick and Phillips screwdriver.

Painting them silver made them look like chrome. The silver paint dried and made the wax resist rods stay up in the correct angles. But, one day in the hot summer So Cal months was all it took for the wax resist rods to droop and look like spaghetti.

Jnaki

We partially solved the problem by melting in some thin wire into the underside of the bent rods for headers. That kept the shape for a few more months, but we had no air conditioning, so the heat was the culprit. Our memories of the modified plastic model was always brought up whenever we saw the original in a car show or two.

The real deal is in good hands and it will be fun to actually see the original once it is finished. Those early days were the beginning and history does need to be preserved. Wow, if it ends up in the Mumford collection, what a place that would be to visit in the South SF Bay Area.

 

Somethings mixed up here, as there was no Wednesday on the Munsters. There was a Wednesday Addams.

 

I heard it was going to be Lilly Munster's car. I don't even think she would drive something as ugly as that.

Cool that the right hands will be the ones taking it back to its iconic form. In a sick way I do want to see the street modifications used again. Maybe not those hideous seats, but the pipes, blowers and slicks could go on a horrible fad T build type. Or just use them in a what not to do book?

 

Sorry alchemy, my bad. I never actually watched any of those shows.
My folks had me watching Beverly Hillbillies and Hee Haa.

 

Watching 77 SS on ME-TV, I was always waiting for the T, in reality it was only on for a few seconds in most episodes the 1st season perhaps a few episodes into the second, then POOF!!!!!! It’s All gone!!!!!!!!
Replaced with a 31 Tudor Tub with Side Mounts sporting wide white, Check Out “The Chrome Coffin “ episode. Max “ Jethro” Baer Jr. cracks up the “McGee Scritchfield” Roadster (only made to look crashed), and the driver of the CC T-Roadster grabs a souvenir out of it for a trophy,
Look closely for the LAR plaques on the back of some of the other roadsters.

 

I think it would be fun to get it running as is and take it to some shows, go cruising around the neighborhood on a Saturday dressed like a clown .... then fix it.

 

Some pics of the Kookie Kar at ROY BRIZIO STREET RODS shop in South San Francisco, CA:

All images by Roy Brizio (from his June 1st Instagram feed)​

 

All images by Roy Brizio (from his June 23rd Facebook feed)​

 

All images by Roy Brizio (from his July 2nd Instagram feed)​

... and Roy's short "walk-around" video: ... just click HERE.

 

Hmm. Wonder how it got registered with a trailer plate (two letters/four digits)?
Re the Munsters story: There was a scene in the episode that covered the creation of the Munster Koach that showed a T-bucket at the used car lot which Lily asked to be combined with the vintage hearse - maybe the studio wanted it for that scene?

 

Kinda painful to look at those pics but im sure the pics are going to get better

 

Hmm, and those dual blowers were totally fake. Bummer.

 

I'm sure I read they were but if ya get fooled they did a good job of fakin it...your not alone Gearhead...

 

@HEMI32 thanks for that coverage you can darn near taste it...

 

I am glad to see its going to be fixed right.

 

I must be the only one that thinks it's cool the way it is..
If it was mine I'd clean it up and drive it as is.

 

I think to some degree it's a matter of context. If it didn't have a famous and iconic history before the current iteration, it might be more palatable to everyone as it sits.

 

The 77 Sunset Strip series on MeTV has revolved from the last show in 1964 back to the first season in the fall of 1958 and the Kookie Kar shows up for the first time in Episode #5. I was only 14 and had a new hero that was just a few years older than me in the coolest car on the planet. It was a still shot with Kookie sitting in it and has a close-up of the 4-deuce Cadillac engine with Offenhauser valve covers. For a moment, just a moment, I was 14 again. Ironically, that was at about the exact time it was on Peter Gunn with Norm driving it like a bat out of hell. Which was the first? My guess is Peter Gunn in a one episode rental from Norm as a part of the story plot. It was an absolute natural car for a dude like Kookie and the 77-SS producers jumped at the chance to enhance their "Mr. Cool".

I have a 14 year old grandson that is car crazy like I was then but I am saddened he can't have the same EXACT feeling I had for cool cars at 14. There was nothing that attracted me more than a cool hot rod and there weren't many around. He has so many other things to be passionate about he can't possibly understand how I felt.

 

I might have contradicted a previous opinion of my own......but Jim had a good sense of wild too...so no your not alone......it has a cool side as it is as well...

 

Did the car ever actually run in this last configuration, or was it a pushmobile? The way the distributor is hidden by the blowers it would have taken all day to change the points....

 

The car had a BIG influence on me....

 

No body has said yet if the car came with all the correct parts that was taken off Norms car.

 

I just have a question.

This car was before my time with it being on tv.

But with all the great clones of it around in both iterations ( black and blue with flames)

Was/is this thing really worth 1/2 a million plus the extensive Resto?

Jim streets version while maybe “ cool” in the 70’s is a caricature and a joke at this time.


Moriarty posted some pics of the “ build quality “ of this car and some of it boarders on unsafe cobbled togethet junk!

Just thinking out loud 1/2 a million plus some serious money to bring it back to SS status seems crazy to me!?! Is it really just bragging rights to say “ i own the ORIGINAL Kookie car” or am I missing something ?

Don’t get me wrong..... something needs to be done to take the stupid off this car and it’s possibly at the best shop to tackle this task.

 

My opinion is the buyer paid for the historic significance of this car. If he wanted to build a Kookie Kar clone, he no doubt could have done so for a fraction of the cost. Is it worth a half million? I don't know. I was surprised when it went over 6 figures, and I was equally surprised the Golden Sahara didn't bring near the coin the Kookie Kar did. I do realize it would cost a fortune and a half to restore the GS, though. Anyway, those are my thoughts. It's awesome to see it go down in current time. When I got into buckets (fairly recent compared to most of you), I was under the impression that car would never see the light of day again.... and yet here it is!

 

It was the first T-bucket. It was featured in movies and several TV shows. Millions of people were influenced by that car. It was built and driven hard by Norm Grabowski, owned by Jim Street, it has bodywork by Valley Custom, and that paint was laid down by Larry Watson. All of that either means something to you or it doesn't - but you can't replicate any of that for any dollar amount.

Value is usually subjective, but nothing puts a real price tag on an item like a well publicized auction. The big bucks showed up and now we know what it's worth.