This video was taken yesterday by a friend of mine at New England Dragway. It was a test & tune day, and one of the cars there ripped off a 6.92 at 210 mph. Twin turbo, G-Body, pulling the front wheels when the boost arrives. These DMC guys deserve a round of applause, and many high 5’s. Well done!
Image borrowed from:
http://i158.photobucket.com/albums/t114/dog427435/1218%20ashbridge/99020Cooper20T51.jpg
Back in the mid 1930’s Rust Heinz (yes, the ketchup guy) decided to design a high end supercar. He made a model out of clay, and had it built by Bowman & Schwartz (they were awesome car builders). The car was known as the 1938 Phantom Corsair. Rust Heinz wanted it to be a limited production car that would be sold for about $15,000, which was a massive sum of money at the time.
The car used a Cord engine in its original front wheel drive configuration. It had an automatic transmission, and they bumped the horsepower up to around 190. Not too shabby for the 1930’s! Once completed, Rust drove the car for a while and advertised it all over. Unfortunately, Rust died tragically at the young age of 25 in a car accident (not in this car), and the “push” for the car to become a success was lost. The car was stored for a few years after Rust’s death and then sold to a guy that modified it to be a more driver friendly vehicle. Better cooling, a bigger windshield, and a modified roof were all molded into the clean original body. It was then painted gold and driven by the new owner.
Decades later it came up for auction and landed in the Harrah Collection in Reno Nevada, which eventually became the National Automobile Museum. It was modified again back to its original design, and is currently on display in the museum today if you’d like to see it in person. My only thought is that it needs more “low”, like at least 5 more inches of it. Other than that, its bug eyed killer whale body is quite appealing to me.
Image Borrowed From:
http://i158.photobucket.com/albums/t114/dog427435/1218%20ashbridge/Vintage/1039.png
Recently I had the pleasure of working on an absolutely beautiful 1984 Chevy Caprice. I know, I know, “absolutely beautiful” and “Caprice” probably shouldn’t ever be used in the same sentence. However, I assure you that this car is an exception to the rule. This big fella, nicknamed “fat Charlie” by its owner, was clearly babied from the start, and always well taken care of. He was parked indoors, and only driven when necessary which kept the mileage down around 2800 miles per year. Yes, you did read that correctly, Charlie has just over 70K miles on it today.
When Charlie arrived in my driveway under the cover of darkness (don’t ask), he had a saggy headliner, stripped out windshield wiper arm, a leaky muffler, and a directional that only wanted to make left turns. All were easy fixes that I thoroughly enjoyed doing. Every nut and bolt was removed without a fight, and I took special care on everything I removed because I didn’t want to damage any of the original interior trim that was in perfect condition. Overboard? Yea, maybe, but I love cars.
Several days later, Charlie had officially passed the state inspection, and I got to take the big guy for a truly enjoyable jaunt down the road. It basically feels like a brand new 1984 car. There is plenty of room for you and 16 of your closest friends, it has power everything, and the floats like a Cadillac down the bumpiest of roads. I even got thumbs up from multiple people! Going forward, Charlie will be kept in the family of the original owner, and driven and enjoyed daily for the foreseeable future. Maaaybe Charlie will even make it to some local cruise nights? We’ll see. 🙂
This morning I was thinking about things that this blog is missing. One thing that jumped out at me was a “X of the day”, meaning something that people could check daily and thoroughly enjoy. I knew it needed to be something great, but it also needed to be something pretty quick to whip together in addition to the daily blogs. Thus, the “Random Picture Of The Day” was born!
Picture Borrowed from:
http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm246/frankenstein1948/Chevado.jpg
In the early 1900’s automotive engineers were trying some crazy stuff. That is one of the reasons that I love older cars so much. These guys didn’t really have a “norm” to start with, so they attempted to create it. Cars in general were in their infancy and each manufacturer was completely different than the next.
The other day I spotted an engine that still had an old clutch assembly attached. It was something that I had never seen before so I snapped off a few quick pics. Judging by the planetary gears on the back of the clutch, it was probably from a tractor or some piece of farm equipment, but it was cool looking & genius design nonetheless. It vaguely resembled a modern puck clutch with it’s multi-pad design. From what I am told, you could swap those friction pads out without pulling the transmission. Now that is a good idea! Just imagine how much cheaper clutch jobs would be if the transmission didn’t need to come out. Even if clutches didn’t last as long, it could be a 30K mile service that is 1 hour of labor, and likely ~ $50 in friction material. What am I missing here? Why was this design lost in history? Why doesn’t somebody reinvent this for ultimate profit? What the heck?
