I've had occasion to post about specials on a number of threads, so here's another get-it-all-together-in-one-place thread. The special phenomenon covered the entire "traditional" era, from the golden age of Brooklands until the '60s, when suitable separate chassis frames ceased to be plentiful and cheap. Specials were built all over the world, including the USA, but were nowhere more popular than in the UK. The idea was to build a sports or competition car out of the parts of something stodgier, with a certain amount of new material added. Making a body is a fundamental part of building a special. With a hot rod, one keeps the body, but might replace almost everything else. Hence we speak of a "'29 on Deuce rails," not a "Deuce with a '29 body on it." With a special, one keeps the chassis and drive train, possibly with fairly radical modifications, and builds one's own lightweight body on it. Specials have been built to a wide variety of performance profiles, from all-round sports specials to trials specials to road-racing specials. Today the emphasis seems to be on the racers, perhaps because they were the most dramatic, to my mind to the detriment of other types. Here follow my gleanings, in no particular order. I have no doubt that there will initially be quite glaring omissions, a state that I trust will be corrected in short order:
Nedd I glanced at this one and my brain said man what a big exhaust. Pretty cool little runabouts. I wonder if you could find one intact today. I have always wanted a sports car.
Uh Oh!!!! I think I just fell into a whole bucket of inspiration. I've really been wanting an open car. Now I know what kind for sure. I love the Pratts car.
Lol.. I was thinking the same.. though "Gangsters" is more of a driving tune for me... "don't call me Scarface..." Otherwise back on T... Excellent thread. I (as you may recall) have a passion for these. In fact I just missed ut on a nice Chassis... oh well.
Does anybody know The Al Hoyt Special? http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2009/12/30/hemmings-find-of-the-day-the-hoyt-special/ I saw it the first time In a english car magasin. Quiet cool IMO, being that Volvo is the most popular brand for rodding/customs In Denmark, so an American built Volvo-bases special rocks my boat! Denmark dident start doing hot rods until early 80's, before that it was mostly hardcore engine builts In European cars. If any changes at all.
That's a Dellow in front of it, a sort of semi-productionized, semi-kit-car special based on British Ford components and really aimed at the sport of trials. That is where one climbs a hill through a forest in the rain, and tries not to get stuck or slide down again. Here are a few trials specials: This one is based on a Jowett Bradford van and lives in my town. I've actually met it in traffic once or twice: tiny but perfectly formed.
That goes to show how big a splash the Lotus 6 and 7 made. They, of course, developed out of Colin Chapman's Austin Seven special. Another car that made a big impression was Ferrari's Barchetta. For a while it was not that far-fetched to find Barchetta-looking pontoon bodies on "thin-fendered" chassis like Austin Sevens, Ford Tens, and pre-war MG Midgets. I've been trying to think of image search terms, as the obvious ones don't produce anything useful.
Interesting thread, Dawie. Thanks for sharing the information and pictures. It seems that cut down doors, double hump cowls, Brooklands style windscreens, and rear mounted spares were common styling elements on these specials. I've always liked those features and I wonder why they never became very common on American hotrods....maybe they did on some speedsters....
The special builder had a free hand with bodywork, limited only by fabricating skills, where the hot-rodder was always constrained by having to modify an existing body. Specials were very close in concept to American speedsters. While it could be said that the hot rod had by 1950 effectively displaced the speedster, the special kept on following its own development path for another fifteen years or so. It might be said that specials give a good clue to what speedsters might have become in the absence of a ready supply of light Ford roadster and coupe bodies - and competitive sanctioning structures that encouraged their use.
Some (apparently) German specials: Some pontoon-bodied "Barchetti": Austin Sevens MGs Fords, mainly, though many of these early grp bodies could easily be adapted to Austin or other chassis. All this feeds into an idea I've had brewing for a while: a liberally hacked-about Cobra kit-car body on a traditional '32 Ford hot rod chassis, as a sort of traditional hot rod/late special crossover.
Anatomy of a trials special: early Cannon special Cotton specials: Unidentified Ford special: Typical trials special, as it had evolved by 1960: Looks like fun: I've recently thought that my idea of the perfect motor sport would combine a drag race, a hillclimb, and a trial - not least in the sense that that might produce the most appealing machinery. All and more to be found at http://www.hsta.co.uk/index.html
Indeed a lot of the early pontoon-bodied specials freely traversed the boundaries between pure specials, kit cars, and small-volume production cars. Like Lotus, Ginetta developed out of these sorts of exercises; the point where a definitive design crystallised being sometimes hard to ascertain. The very first Ginettas grew out of specials based on the little pre-war Wolseley Hornet: (... which is not quite the same as a Wolseley Hornet Special, as that was a sort of BMW Z3 for the hairdressers of the '30s.)
Interesting Ford-MG hybrid. Note typical "fats and skinnies" rather than bigs & littles. More here: http://www.oldclassiccar.co.uk/car-trials.htm
You brought up a good point about fat & Skinny as opposed to big & littles. The original purpose of "bigs" was to get some more rubber on the road but also to functionally lower the rear end ratio for higher top end speed at the same RPM. (And the rake was so you didn't need to jack up the rear of the car to reach the quick change to change from higher ratio highway gears to get over the mountain to the high desert to smaller ratio dry lake gears.) The skinny and wide was/is for better traction on the rear end at a lower or the same included tire radius ratio.
This has to be the coolest thing I have seen on the HAMB and there is a lot of cool shit here. Thanks for posting Bill
Thanks for the topic! I really admire the specials! Love it when inspiration yields a car that is loud, fast, quick and quirky; quirky is cool!
A mate and I are building a special. Waiting for the uni to arrive in the post for the steering column so I can sit right in front of the diff and take it for a spin. Having the tail shaft cut and shut will be the most expensive thing done to it. Very cheap all up.
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/album.php?albumid=28491 This HAMBalbum has a few photos of just a couple of specials seen at Laguna Seca. I have more if you'd like I can post some.
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