Antique & Classic Cars Blog

A friend sent me this picture. His caption: “dumbest car ever?”

I’ve seen in the sheetmetal the late-model Jeep Wagoneer-based Jerrari Bill Harrah built and which is on display in Reno. This ain’t it. My first reaction to this vehicle was that it was a Photoshop job–blurry around the edges, “tire smoke” rising up by the wheel-wells providing some blur to the nose/body joint line….

Some net hunting will yield an answer for you, but without or before doing that, what are folks’ first impressions? From your 21st Century experiences, does this look like a real photo or a cut-and-paste hoax?

Some readers ante’d up with suggestions on bumpers that might be suitable swaps for a BMW507’s (since a friend is building a 507 body). Here’s the round-up so far:

Genuine 507 article:

1965 Mustang (suggested by Gary):

1950 Ford (offered by Dave G):

Late 1960s MGB (my thought):

If anybody else wants to test your parts/classics/junkyard memory, please post your thoughts!

It’s certainly possible to custom make a bumper in steel and have it chromed. Sleuthing can be more fun though.

Anybody got any suggestions on a donor car for a BMW 507 bumper?  (See this post for the point of this query.)

That last post got me thinking of high school. Remember all the things you believed back then?

In those days, my ride du jour was a 1974 Plymouth Satellite 4-door with 318 V8, license plate 369 44L. Good for 110 on the highway, or, uh, so I reckon, and held five skiers with full equipment. But for this car I had no speed trick–only a Pioneer AM/FM casette stereo with Jensen speakers and well-played tapes of Jethro Tull, AC/CD and The Who.

My good friend Ferg had a ‘74 Nova, yellow, plate PO8 261. And that car did have a speed trick, or so we thought. We’d heard that flipping the lid on the air cleaner–making it concave instead of convex–allowed more air and created more power.

At the scientific level, with dynomometer, gas spectrometer, team of MIT guys and some Snap-On Tools for disassembly verification, maybe a tiny bit. Overall, this probably didn’t give us any more oomph.

But we loved the idea that it did. We used to treat that trick like one of the prime switches in the Batmobile. We’d be out driving somewhere, it’d get late, the then-rural roads of Chester County would be quiet and we’d decide the need to get home by 12:00 required the speed trick. So out we’d hop, pop the hood, spin off the big air cleaner wing nut, and the deed was done….

Heh. Wonder where that Nova is now…. Probably melted back into a Suburban’s fenders, some weight plates, an iron and a waffle maker.

Something strange is afoot. Unless I headed too many soccer balls, a common type of tire on muscle cars in my youth was the Laramie Equalizer. It stands out in my mind with Tiger Paw as everyday rubber wherever gawkable vehicles sat still.

And yet…. the interent, source of more useful and useless information than any other database in history, has nothing. Nothing. I’ve tried a few spellings of Laramie and a couple of Equalizer. Zip. Zero. No hits.

Did my undergrad years at Madison exact too heavy a toll?

Does anyone out there remember Laramie Equalizers? What spelling error am I making? What planet am I now on?

OK, it’s in place. My friend Bill is going to build what there are too few to buy without spending a very, very large sum–a beautiful German sports car manufactured for only a few years during that styling breakthrough-period in the late 1950s.

The car is the BMW 507. While its performance would be tame by today’s standards, the car’s looks have few peers. Problem is only about 250 were made. Most of these still exist, but are locked away in collections. I saw one for sale for $235,000, already sold. Bill says his research turned up average prices in the $400,000 range.

Spending that kinda money was not in the cards. But this is the 21st Century. Anybody who watched Monster Garage knows that fabricators can build just about anything. Jesse James built a flying Panoz Esperante sports car!

So why not build a 507? There are talkers and doers. My friend is a doer’s doer. Truth be told, he didn’t want a half-century old 507. That would be neat, of course, but he wants a car that looks like that yet can be driven any day, anywhere.

Hot rod time! Using 507 and hot rod in the same sentence may seem strange but that’s exactly the concept, for what is a hot rod but an old car fixed up with newer parts to perform better?

Bill got hold of Vescio’s Customization and Fabrication and the game was afoot. You need a starting point and Bo Vescio keyed in on the MGA. His shop restored a rough one for a customer so he and his crew know the car well.

The game plan is to keep much of the MGA’s middle section–doors, passenger compartment, cowl, windshield, as well as the rear portion of the fenders and the forward portion of the quarter panels. Fore and aft of the wheel wells, the sheet metal will have to be changed. Likewise, the hood (or bonnet, since it’s an MGA piece) will change and of course the nose and tail. The front shut line is similar but the MGA bonnet says narrow, while the 507 one fans wide to give access to the wider V8 configuration engine.

Most of the bodywork will be metal. The Vescio’s crew can fabricate the required pieces. (I saw a pre-war fender Ryan Ladda made from flat sheet with an English wheel and other tricks and it was amazing. Dead on for contour before a lick of filler was on it.)

As with home renovation, there will be innumerable choices to be made along the way; the plan’s nuances will likely shift many times. For example, what under hood? Initial prospects are Chevy V6 or V8 or 5-liter Ford.

A starting-candidate MGA is fitted with wire wheels. This style may stay but who knows…. Regardless of particulars it should be a fun project. I’ll keep everyone posted, ’cause I like it.

One of these years I’d love to put together a classic car for racing and take advantage of a killer track like Brainerd so close to home. The members of the Vintage Sports Car Racing Club do that every year when the snow melts.

I crashed their kick-off party at Mark Brandow’s shop, Quality Coaches, in South Minneapolis. As always, Quality has neat cars in various states of disassembly, repair and restoration to gawk at; add some folks to talk racing with and a little chili for the event and it makes for a pretty good Saturday morning. Better than all the ones spent shoveling combined.

Cars on hand ranged from the relatively common (by classic standards) to the unusual and race-modified.

As an MG owner most of my life, seeing an A with removeable hardtop behind Mark’s B GT with Wabasto sunroof across the street from a right-hand-drive B GT, in front of a drop-top later original-style Mini (not, of course, an MG) is a fine sign of summer’s classic-car pleasures ahead.

One of the rare birds onhand in the shop is this Alvis shooting brake, a woody designed for transporting hunting parties.

The hood ornament stresses the hunting theme with a new spin on the fox and the hound.

For this party, Mark had his MGA race car on hand getting prepped for another season on the track. The key with vintage racing is for the car to be outfitted basically as it was when built, with, of course, various safety features to minimize risks from accidents and fire. This car is obviously an MGA, though the engine has been ramped up for more than sleepy track times. Though I cropped it out, there’s a Chevy 350-powered MGB drag car sitting behind it. It would not be allowed to run laps with the VSCR club.

While I was writing this an unexpected surprise showed up outside my window. An eagle! Looks like a juvenile bald eagle, one of few, I reckon, in South Minneapolis. Unfortunately, I had set my camera to low resolution for internet photos and forgot to switch it back. Had I, this shot out the bedroom window would have been a lot clearer. Still cool though. Hope it returns.

Been a while since we’ve done a Friday Fun. If you’re like me, you’re probably sitting on a few million dollars wondering how to get it out of the way before someone trips on it and has to go to the emergency room.

Good news! eBay has several cars that can turn piles of unsightly money into summer cruising fun.

Here’s the list:

–Two and a quarter million dollar Hemi ‘Cuda.

–Million dollar Rolls Royce Phantom (if you don’t already have one).

–Five million dollar Ferrari Testarossa (this could prevent several people stumbling in your money room)

Please send in a picture if you pick up any of these little beauties.

It’s never wise to count Minnesota’s winter out, but…. seems most of the big blizzards are behind us. If you have a classic car, you’re now doubt scheming of those first long drives of the season.

Before you fire it up and head for Red Wing or Duluth, here are a few checks worth performing to make sure things go well.

1. Check the fluids. In our joy over the return of fun-car weather, it’s easy to sit down, press the pedals and turn the key. Pop the hood first. A slow leak in the clutch or brake system might have drained them over the winter. Just because the pedal shows resistance on the first push doesn’t mean the system isn’t low.

2. Air up those tires. Tires lose about a pound a month, average, and underinflation isn’t always easy to spot by sight. Proper inflation will reduce excess heat and extend the tires’ life.

3. Charge your battery. If you own a classic car, you probably own a battery charger. Boy is it annoying when a classic starts up, fills us full of summer-cruise dreams, then refuses to start when the sun is setting and you’re 30 miles from your house.

4. Check the wipers and wiper blades. In a perfect world rain and your classic car will seldom meet. When they do, the issue of where that water is going and how much acid is in it is a lot less important than seeing formidable and immovable objects ahead. If you don’t do it during a pre-season car wash–covered car?–spray a little water on the windshield and hit the wipers. They should clear the glass as well as your daily driver’s do.

5. With a friend’s help, check the headlights, turn signals and–most importantly–the brake lights! Older wiring connections are not as secure and weather-tight as modern ones. Things loosen up, corrode, get scummy and fail to work. The bulbs and lenses on an older car can be pretty dim by modern standards. At the very least, you want them to work. If the light is too dim to see well, look into new lenses, a modern headlight conversion, or adding a middle brake light.

6. Puddle check. Look under the car for telltale pools of coolant, brake or clutch fluid, or gear oil. Do this before you move the car. The location of any puddle or spot will provide good evidence of its source.

7. Check those belts. A broken fan or alternator (generator) belt can leave you stranded or overheat your classic’s engine. Check for proper play and make sure the belt is still strong and pliable without excess wear.

8. Fill ‘er up. Gas gauges can get a little fussy on older cars. That half tank it’s promising might be two gallons instead. Also, evaporation has been at work over the long (long, long, long) winter. If your gauge isn’t solid as Sears, reset the trip odometer with each tankful and use that as a backup miles-to-empty reminder.

See ya on the road!

Thirty-five years ago, manufacturers started switching from heavy high-horsepower cars to smaller, more efficient vehicles–and then switched right back. Conservation is not this country’s driving concern, so to speak. Some neighbors of a friend bought two new coupes in the name of being greener. They continue, however, to warm them up for ten minutes each morning before driving away. If fuel efficiency is measured in miles per gallon, guess if you drive no miles, you use no gas.

Waste is everywhere, though, not just at the wheel. Ever try to spare the landfills a bag or two at a store? Why, when you buy only one item–which comes in a bag–do they try to give you another bag to carry it in?

I often pluck the item back out and say, “I don’t need a bag.” Ever do this? Know what happens? The clerk throws out the bag!

That’s what the clerk did yesterday at a local retailer when I pulled the single item he had put in its own bag–three boxes of kleenex shrinkwrapped together–and put them with a couple other boxes also in their own bag. Even though I had more items he was going to pack up, he threw out that bag and took a new one. Amazing.

He continued to pack one or two things per bag as I consolidated them, oblivious to efficiency, conservation, etc. For an instant I was surprised at how little it all mattered to him–then I realized, hey, at least he’s not putting wheels on at a tire store.

“You tighten the lugs on that Vette?”

“Uh….”