I been framed!

And brake'd, and lit up, and axled and wheeled... sounds like a good start to a blues song, right? *makes mental note*

But what really happened is a fresh infusion of parts to give the ol' T project a little jumpstart. I started off trading some artwork to Roddychops, head honcho of Vintage Rods--the site logo, the official site flyer here, and a "Roddychop's Customs" logo for his personal builds in exchange for a nice F100 brake setup and some dropped steering arms. Then I found out he's an even bigger fan of the art department at the Royal Canadian Mint, and traded a few of their handy wallet-sized portraits of Robert Borden and the Queen for a frame, a dropped tube axle and some headlights... the result is this:

Just another mockup pick, but the wheelbase and front ride height should be right on...  Rear end is gonna come up maybe 4-6" since the frame kickup is actually resting on the rear axles right now, but it looks good for a classic highboy stance imho.  I'm not 100% sure I wanna run a tube axle with split wishbones though, but the alternatives are either chopping off those beautiful frame horns for a suicide front so I can run my '40 axle, Z-ing the frame in front or sweeping it at the firewall for same, or maybe adapting my rear hairpins to run 'em in front instead. 

In any case, here now for your musical entertainment is Mr. Ry Cooder, doing "Crazy 'Bout an Automobile":

I love the smell of rust in the afternoon

The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle aside, the man in the brown truck came through today--as did the person in the red-and-white postiemobile yesterday--with like 100 pounds altogether of vintage Henry Ford and/or new-in-box Speedway Motors goodness. As seen in the above pic, I've now got a drilled '40 Ford axle--bought from the owner of a Canadian Hot Rods & Classics cover car, no less!--a pair of split wishbones of unknown vintage, and not pictured, another set of split 'bones, and a brand new pair of rear hairpin radius rods. I'm on the hunt for a set of early Ford V8 or F1 spindles, plus a buncha stuff that I'm probably gonna wind up getting new from the aftermarket:

• spring perches


• kingpins


• a disc brake kit


• shackels


• a front spring

Throw in whatever miscellaneous hardware I'm gonna need--U-bolts, spring clamps and the like, and I'll be ready to mockup a frame with 2x4s, then order the real deal in solid steel. Well, 2x3x.188 wall rectangular tube steel, but you get the general idea...

Two wheels is plenty

It takes two (three?) things to do what the guy in the Messerschmidt microcar does here: balls made of steel--and brains made of, well, steel. Or anything else that isn't nerve tissue.



Tip o' the hat to Melvin C. Thudpucker for this one.

Gentlemen, start your engines

The 1941 Indy 500, in glorious colour!

Well, Bert would be happy with this one, then

Top Gear's James May races a Ford SportKa against... are you ready for it? A pigeon.

911 Never Forget

In which the estimable Mr. Jeremy Clarkson attempts to visit destruction upon a poor, innocent '80s Porsche, for the crime of being too small, too ergonomically poor and too German. Reminds me of my high-school days, when we used to run into buildings and mow down fenceposts in my friend's old '67 F100 and managed nothing worse than to dent the grill a little bit. I wish I'd bought it--I could be leasing it out to the BC government, unleashing the rage of a 390 FE V8 on the pine-beetle ravaged forests of the Interior in order to save what's left.

I'll have the triple Strombergs with a side-order of cheater slicks, please

Coming soon: Pix from the 2007 Diablos Rockabilly Rumble car show, just as soon as I can find my %^&$ micro-SD to not-so-micro-SD card adaptor. Waay better show than last year's--bigger turnout, and some seriously fine rides. If only the "completely bork your photo settings" mode hadn't kicked in on my phonecam when that '32 5-window was leaving the show.

Edit: Here's some black n' whites from the HAMB's Boyd Who to tide you over. And some more. In colour, because they can do that now!

"I would rather staple my ears to a horse."

From the inimitable BBC Top Gear, a sports car race with a difference: Can Clarkson & friends finish building a Caterham 7 in kit form before the Stig can drive a finished one to the track?

More like Steve McQueen than Sheryl Crow will ever be

Five reasons this clip (the car chase from "Bullitt") is cool:

1. It's probably the number one non-Carroll Shelby reason '67 Mustang fastbacks rule. (Make mine red, though.)


2. The moment, right around the time the bad guys notice McQueen in their rearview and smoke the tires on the Charger, that the soundtrack music switches from the magnificent Lalo Schifrin to the gifted, Detroit-based composers FoMoCo and Mopar.


3. Like every movie of the '60s and '70s, every single city-streets shot contains at least one VW Bug. Punchbuggy would be a bloodsport.


4. The drinking game: Every time the Charger loses a hubcap, take a swig.


5. Steve McQueen. 'Nuff said.

Q: What comes from Munich and sounds like a jet engine?

A: Hans-Joachim Stuck lapping the original 14-mile Nurburgring in a BMW M3.
[via the H.A.M.B.]

See America right

For some people, a journey as long and daunting as a drive from Tennessee to Las Vegas ought to be done in a reliable, comfortable, high tech late model sedan--something with full climate control, plush seats, loads of legroom and a full DVD/GPS navigation & entertainment system with more transistors in it than the Starship Enterprise. However, for the Baron of Bias-plies, the Wallah of Whitewalls, Corky Coker--who runs a tire company that repops every form of obsolete rubber from Model T-era skidless pneumatic whatchamacallums to hot rod-approved pie crust cheater slicks--your old man's Accord won't do. No, he's making the journey in style, in a freshly built '32 Ford roadster, complete with supercharged flathead V8. And in a rare (and welcome) concession to the bugaboo of modernity, he's blogging it on his Blackberry. Go and read it, folks, at least you'll learn what "raining pitchforks and hammerhandles" means.
[via The Jalopy Journal]

Insane vehicular overkill, thy name is Vauxhall

Ever wonder what'd happen if you shoehorn a twin-turboed, nitrous-injected 572 cubic inch Chevy big block into a semi-teensy British compact? This guy did. And he claims it's the world's quickest and fastest street car.



Read more here. (Warning, headache-inducing red page background--try and make yourself colourblind or something before clicking.)
[via jalopnik]

Filed under:

• cars
• hotrods
• vauxhall

Big Daddy is our leader!

"Tales of the Rat Fink" is the forthcoming docutoon about Ed "Big Daddy" Roth's chrome-plated, fuel-injected and steppin-out-over-the-line influence on nearly everything that is awesome in America. Here's the trailer for y'all [via The H.A.M.B.]


Expect the ride to the theatre to look kinda like this:

(Aaron von Mindin's blown Model A coupe as filmed by the Mad Fabricators Society)

Filed under:

• cars
• hotrods
• kustom-kulture
• movies
• video
• big-daddy-roth

Rock around the Communist Bloc

This has to be the ultimate excersize in "Odd Rod" absurdity: The BBC's Top Gear hand a six-year-old Lada Niva over to Lotus for 1000 man-hours' worth of high performance mods--tweaked suspension, new brakes, wheels and tires, a 180hp Fiat twincam to replace the original boat anchor and a sinister black-and-silver paint job. This has to be the ultimate borscht rocket. (Thanks, Melvin!)

Filed under:

• cars
• hotrods
• wtf
• lada
• tuner
• lotus
• top-gear
• video
• youtube

The years of sand and speed

Coop has a wonderful post featuring scans of Veda Orr's Hot Rod Pictorial, a late-'40s yearbook of the dawn of SCTA land speed racing. Orr was a fascinating woman--the first woman dry lakes racer, the first hot rod journalist (she wrote and edited for the SCTA's newsletter before the outbreak of WWII, and even put a couple of issues together during the war as a morale booster for the boys overseas)--and the period between the mid-1930s and late-1940s was a hugely influential one in terms of the look and technology of the traditional hot rod. Well worth a look.

Go fast, turn left

Before "stock cars" meant rolling billboards with multi-million dollar budgets that bear no resemblance to the cars they supposedly represent, the American midwest was full of dirt ovals, where local daredevils would brave bodily harm in stripped down, homebrewed specials. Hotrods & Roadsters of Central Kansas offers a glimpse into this bygone era.

Found on the HAMB, alongside this video:

It ain't Paso, but it'll do

I went to the Diablos'[*] Rockabilly, uh, Whatchamadoodle[**] hot rod show today. Not a huge turnout--there were maybe 40 or 50 cars and a dozen or so bikes when I got there--but there were definitely some high-quality rides present. Nice tunes, too. Anyway, if you're craving eye candy[***], I've got all the goodies on my Flickr page. Or at least all the goodies I could capture given my sudden onset of memorycardus forgetticus.

[*] The Calgary Diablos, not the Liberty City ones.

[**] Ten second's googlage tells me it's plain old "Rockabilly Car Show", and not some catchy "Rockabilly Rat Rod Rumble Rebellion"-type thing. Hey, a rose by any other name etc. etc., right?

[***] "Candy" being a not-so-accurate term given my photographic ability. 'Spose I oughtta wipe the dust of my lens sometime this year, eh?

Oh what a feeling

Traditional American style executed with obsolete Japanese hardware. Somebody needs to build one of these full-scale--mind you, a '59 Toyota is probably pretty tiny, so you'd have to be Vern Troyer to actually fit in one with that radical of a chop.

Original image here.

Dig through the ditches and burn through the witches

Grandpa Munster takes the Dragula for a ride:



[via the H.A.M.B.]