Antique & Classic Cars Blog

Thursday night was one of the best get-togethers I’ve been to at Minnetonka Drive-In.

Weather was nice, great cars in every direction, and a lot of Minnesota car fans happy the snow and the rain were gone—for now. There were rat rods, customs, bone stock vehicles, motorcycles and a lot of proud owners on hand.

Hang around vehicles and enthusiasts like these and you can see and learn some cool stuff….

Tom Snead is a former instrument builder who brought his fine woodworking skills to bear on his enviable ‘67 Vette (a 400-horse 427 big block Vette, that is). The typical steering wheel here is plastic. Not Snead’s. His wheel, dash and shifter base plate are burled walnut. The round rudder betrays Snead’s instrument-making background. Mother-of-pearl buttons look a lot like those on a guitar neck, and the abalone insets evoke similar touches on a guitar or violin. The insets lie over dovetail joints, which connect each walnut section around the wheel. Because the wood surrounds a metal rim, it has front and back pieces, with their seam neatly covered in ebony. —Sweet stuff for the Vette, instrument and fine woodworking fan.

How about this cherry turbocharged Corvair? Dave Gustafson is the lucky finder and owner of this machine. The air-cooled, rear-engine Corvair is always a novelty, but with factory turbo and pristine paint and interior, it’s an inviting and enviable summer toy too.

And who doesn’t like El Caminos? (Well some people don’t but some people don’t like going out in the sun or driving in the country, either, so let’s ignore them for now.) The paint job atop this ‘59 is a masterful piece of art, making a good car even better and more personalized.

Immerse yourself in this stuff long enough and parts can come full circle. In the course of building my 215-V8 powered TR6, I sourced a rare manual transmission bellhousing from a West Coast junkyard. The transmission I settled on, from a TR8, came with a bellhousing, however, so I parted with mine to a 215 specialist I know in town. Naturally, I regretted it immediately. Talking with the owner of this Morgan Plus-8, which uses the same engine (GM sold it to Rover in the 1960s, and it spread to many British cars), I learned 215 specialist Jim built his V8 and got him the bellhousing to mate up a GM transmission. I know where that bellhousing came from! ‘Least it went in an excellent car…

If this beautiful ’Bird looks a lot like the one in American Graffiti, it should. Most of the shots of Suzanne Somers show her in a ’56, but there was a white ’57 on the set too and several shots are framed too close to see the differences. Owner Randy Schneider knows this car was shipped new to an LA car dealer and was sold by Movieland Auctions as excess inventory for Universal Studios in the mid-’70s. He doesn’t have the VIN of the car used in the film, but the evidence he’s gathered indicates that the platinum blonde who captivates Richard Dreyfuss’s character may have batted her baby blues from this very Thunderbird.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 18th, 2007 at 3:15 pm and is filed under Car parts, Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.