My dad made a point of taping that Ferrari ad to the garage wall. It looked down on a nice hot-rod roadster my dad built in college and hung onto for the rest of his life. It started as a 31 Ford but was essentially scratch-built into the style of the grand European roadsters of the 30s. It was also an early example of a Hemi swap, with the 1954 version of a "crate" Fire Dome. ... View more

Triumph TR8/TR7 - I remember watching the TV commercials for the shape of things to come concluding with the car driving into a wedge-shaped garage. I've always had the impression that Triumph TR-x have always been under-appreciated. But that could just be me. We had a 1969 Sprite in our family (I learned mechanics on the rebuild, then my dad commuted with it twenty years to wear it out again.) so I may just be tuned to see more of them. ... View more

Am I getting the basic idea right - Bond has an RX-3 modified into a race car, notices that RX-3s have become expensive to repair so decides to have a one-off car built as a replacement. It is better to have a custom shop replace banged-up unique panels from scratch than to source existing replacement parts? Perhaps they keep good notes to reproduce panels quickly? At least there is no guessing where to drop the car off for repair. ... View more

I was pulled into this read because I am looking for a wagon/truck to pull 8000 lb trailer. Not clear how a smaller/lighter vehicle is the solution. It seems to me we already have a lot of smaller/lighter vehicles, to the limit of current safety requirements. Resisting crash loads adds a lot of weight to a vehicle, maybe we just need a mandate to stop crashing cars? Just don't bring back the solid shaft steering column to save the weight of two small U-joints! ... View more

One thing to consider with today's styling are (pedestrian) safety and fuel mileage requirements. These drive toward a smooth-ish exterior surfaces and not much space (thickness) between inside and outside. It is hard to be distinct with only a few inches to play with the form. Those amazing swoops and trim details from the 50's and 60's benefited from a much larger design space (so to speak!) to move metal around and no real concern how it might interact in a collision. ... View more

Agree on "halo vehicle", like the very first Tesla Roadster. I am not expecting this Hummer to be a big seller but generate a lot of splash (like this article!) With EV looking like the upcoming "normal", I included a 50 amp circuit in my new shop to accommodate an EV charger in the future (and be generally future-proof with two 200A panels!). Existing house has only the single 200A panel, as you note. It also has several drop-out relays as part of the back-up generator system. I wonder if that would be the trick for EV charging from a limited service panel - turn on too much something else and have the charger automatically drop off for, say, an hour, then switch back on after the other loads have reduced. I can see modding EVs to become like building computers at home - mostly reading product reviews to find the best components supplied by others. Assembly oriented to plugging into standardized interfaces, although some adaptation is not uncommon. How nice for us if EV takes a similar turn with standardized battery and motor specs for plug and play. It can be satisfying (having built several PCs from scratch) but a distinctly different experience than making a modified vehicle from inspiration and a pile of disparate parts. I know OEMs like to control the customer experience with proprietary designs (and I'm looking at you, Tesla!) but have at least agreed to common computer elements (OBD port and many sensors) to allow independents to repair vehicles. The same system could be employed for EV-specific components, under the guise of streamlining pre- and post-processing of the environmentally-impactful elements. ... View more

"It sure looks fun to drive, though, even if it would practically disappear into every blindspot of a modern truck or SUV." When I was in high school (late 70s), friend's older brother had a Honda Z600. It frequently displayed new gray body panels and ultimately got sold as the driver got tired of people bumping into it while parked. Just too small to be seen! It looked like a fun car, though. They pretty much disappeared by the time I could have bought one, though. I did end up buying a Honda Civic wagon from a friend's girlfriend's brother, not running right ($50!) I redid the cylinder head (remember the three-valve CVCC design?), which only demonstrated the rings were bum, too. Hoped for economy over my van did not appear, I burned so much oil (costing 4x gasoline) that it offset fuel savings. It was a nice drive, though, with a classy design for a 70's economy car. Ended up selling to "a guy", with careful explanation that oil needed to be checked/filled every day. Sure enough, later that year I got a call from a junkyard trying to pin some fees on me as the last name on title - abandoned with burned-out engine! No problem back to me, though, as I made sure to properly report the sale at the time. ... View more

I bought a set of welding gas bottles four decades ago. Those bottles are long gone, replaced with innumerable refills over the years. Like you say, just show up at any supply shop, offload the empties, onload the full and and back to welding.  Who cares how long to safety-check the bottles and do the refill? ... View more

Look for a drain hole at the bottom of the housing. Seems to work with low open intake on friend's VTEC Civic. ... View more

My dad was all over the 71 Mustang, it had everything he wanted as a hard-core hotrodder in the fifties. He bought a very discrete Sportroof in Pewter, changed the distributor on the 351 to Mallory and it was our family car until the low octane, diluted gas of the eighties made the 11:1 compression ratio engine hard to drive. My dad got his money's worth of use (and fun) out of it, though, and after it became a tired car, and then, an outside neglected car ("ran when parked"!) he finally sold it to a local kid with lots of enthusiasm. It was great to follow along the young blood getting it back on the road. Getting back to this article, the NACA scoop was cool, but Dad ended up disconnecting the vacuum motors to keep the doors closed because the air cleaner was always fillling up with leaves and stuff through the scoops. ... View more

Ha, I still brag about the genuine corinthian vinyl in my car but suspect nobody remembers the reference (except zmega). ... View more