Corvair Corsa with the Crown Engineering V8 kit. Pirelli radials, Bilsteins, ground effects, fat sway bars, 350 horse 327, big discs, etc made for a fun ride except for the damn shifter.
Sometimes I miss these 3 as well, chopped 40 P/U, chopped 39 Ford tub, 37 Cord bumptrunk Custom Beverly.
I miss my avatar the most. '56 F100, 'glass front clip, 1970 .030 over 429, top loader 4 speed w/ 3:73s. Had it 20 years, drove across the country twice, still makes me smile when I think of it.
I miss the first car I ever built. As a gift for managing to graduate from High School, my pop bought me a car. I found a car I liked and we picked it up. It was a two-tone coral and gray 1955 Studebaker Commander hardtop. It had a lot of the Speedster finishes like the engine turned dash and the shoemaker stitched upholstery. It had the 259 cubic inch V-8 and 3 on the tree with overdrive. I loved the look of the car and I didn't care that the motor was clapped out and burned more oil than the Queen Mary. It quickly became embarrassing to drive and I was fouling plugs daily. Everybody knew when I was in town because the smoke train hung in the air for blocks. I spent that summer working on a farm and saved enough money to buy a '58 Caddy engine and the necessary adapters to bolt it up to the Studebaker transmission. Car was a sleeper. Sold it to buy a family car. Still sad about that.
Beautiful car, Brandon! I had a '63-1/2 fastback the same colour. My car had the 390 4bbl engine and console shifted automatic trans. Blue bucket seat interiour same colour as the outside. Bought it in '66 not long before leaving for the Marines. Gave it to my Step-Dad when I reported to Staging Battalion at Camp Pendleton, as I wasn't so sure I'd make it back from Viet Nam and I had been such a pain in the arse with my hard partying and general hell raising in high school. Thought it was the least I could do for him. Step-Dad told me he would take care of the car and it was mine when I returned. As it turned out, I got blown up 8 May, '67 (satchel charge, I was told) and when I mustered out in Oct. of '67 my folks didn't tell me the '63 had been totaled the week before. I got home at 0-dark thirty in the morning and Step-Dad was driving the red '55 Ford I had swapped my DeSoto hemi into the summer of '65. Didn't see the '63 was wrecked until I got up the following day. It had been hit so hard (right rear quarter) that the frame was bent and the top to the console was sprung open and wouldn't shut. Step-Dad told me Mom didn't want to tell me it was wrecked because she thought I wouldn't come home and might reenlist. Well, I admit to being a car crazy kid in those years, but I would have come home at least for a while because I was still on crutches and pretty well banged up. But as far as I was concerned, the car was now my Step-Dad's anyway. It was true that I did not want to be discharged and was really ticked off when I was sent home against my wishes. But they wouldn't take me back in the shape I was in so I had no choice in the matter. Even so, I can understand Mom thinking what she did. I asked Step-Dad how the car got wrecked and it was a strange tale, to say the least. He had driven it to the grocery store across the way. Parked in the middle of a large parking lot with cars all 'round. Got his groceries into the back seat. Got in and sat there lighting his pipe. Hadn't even started the engine yet. Meanwhile, this lady in a Rambler station wagon took off across the road. Her throttle stuck wide open and she came across the road and plowed into the cars in the parking lot there. He said she hit 5 or 6 other cars and totaled all of them except for her Rambler and one other. The really odd thing was she never hit the Ford directly. She hit another car, which in turn hit a 2nd car and she pushed those 2 cars into the Ford. Must have really been moving to do all that damage. Anyway, Step-Dad finally settled with the insurance company a year later and kept the '63. Went down the road to a wrecking yard and bought the body, rearend and frame from a black car, same body style. Put the doors, front sheet metal, engine, rearend and interiour from the blue car in it and drove it like that until he bought a new car in '78. Never did paint it all one colour. He saved my Mallory Voltmaster II coil off the '63 and gave it to me in 1980 after I returned from the service again (yes, I finally went back in, Navy that time). I ran that coil on a couple of cars since and still have it. Its going on my '57 Chevy sedan when I drop the 292 truck 6 in. Thanks for the memories, Harry
The Jalopy Journal
